The book of antelopes, vol. 4 (of 4)Sclater, Philip Lutley
Science
The book of antelopes, vol. 4 (of 4)
Sclater, Philip Lutley
Antelopes
Whether the horn from Sierra Leone, figured and described by Afzelius
in his essay on Antelopes, published in the ‘Nova Acta’ of the Society
of Sciences of Upsala in 1795, and subsequently referred to by Hamilton
Smith and other authors, really belonged to the present species is
somewhat uncertain, although such may very possibly have been the
case. The first trustworthy introduction of this species to scientific
literature is therefore due to Ogilby, a well-known authority on the
Ruminants, who in 1836 established his _Antilope eurycerus_ in a
paper read before the Zoological Society of London on November the 22nd
of that year. Ogilby’s materials consisted of “two pairs of horns, one
attached to the skull, the other to the integuments of the head,” which
had then “long existed in the Society’s collection.” Their origin was
unknown, but they were believed to have come from Western Africa. These
specimens, we may add, are now in the British Museum, to which they
were transferred by the Zoological Society in 1858. One of the pairs
was figured by Gray in the volume of the ‘Gleanings from the Knowsley
Menagerie,’ published in 1850.
In 1853 Temminck recorded the existence of a pair of horns of this
species in the Leyden Museum, and gave its vernacular name as the
“Trommé” of the Mandingos of Western Africa.
With this exception no addition appears to have been made to our
knowledge of this Antelope until 1860, when Mr. P. B. Du Chaillu, who
had met with it during his excursions in the interior of Gaboon from
1856 to 1859, described it before the Boston Society of Natural History
as a new species, under the name _Tragelaphus albo-virgatus_. In
the report of his paper published in the ‘Proceedings’ of that Society
we find its locality given as the “forests about the head-waters of the
Fernand-Vaz in the Aschankolo Mountains, 60 miles south of the Equator,
and 140 from the coast.” In the narrative of his travels, published
in 1861, Mr. Du Chaillu writes of the same Antelope as belonging to
the fauna of the “Rembo Region,” the Rembo being one of the rivers
that flows from these mountains, and tells us that it is “very shy,
swift of foot, and exceedingly graceful in its motions.” The full-page
steel engraving that accompanies these remarks, which, by the kindness
of Messrs. Murray, we are enabled to reproduce (fig. 103, p. 134),
is stated to have been taken from a well-preserved specimen in his
collection. The native name is given as “Bongo.”
After describing his specimens in America, Mr. Du Chaillu brought them
to this country, and disposed of them to the British Museum.
[Illustration:
Fig. 103.
The Bongo Antelope.
(From Du Chaillu’s ‘Travels in Equatorial Africa,’ p. 306.)
]
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