The book of antelopes, vol. 4 (of 4)Sclater, Philip Lutley
Science
The book of antelopes, vol. 4 (of 4)
Sclater, Philip Lutley
Antelopes
The late Edward Blyth, well known for many years as the zealous
Curator of the Museum of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, was the first
to point out that the Kudu had a smaller brother, which, though
nearly allied, was specifically quite distinct from its better-known
relative. Although it is probable that Blyth was wrong in some of the
identifications of previous writers which he assigned to the present
species, he was undoubtedly correct in his general views on the
subject, and had the merit of assigning to the new _Strepsiceros_
the appropriate name _imberbis_, which at once distinguishes it
from its neck-maned ally.
It is singular that while the Greater Kudu, as we have just shown, has
such a widely-extended range in Africa, the Lesser Kudu is restricted
to a comparatively very small area, extending only, so far as is
certainly known, from Somaliland in the north to the coast-region of
British Central Africa in the south.
After Blyth the Smaller Kudu appears to have next attracted the
attention of Sir John Kirk. Writing to Sclater from Zanzibar, where
he was British Consul, in 1873, Sir John stated that he had obtained
from the Brava coast a living female Kudu which appeared to belong to
a smaller species than the ordinary form (_cf._ P. Z. S. 1873,
p. 195). Two years later, in June 1875, the late Sir Victor Brooke
exhibited at a meeting of the Zoological Society of London original
drawings by Wolf of the two Kudus, and pointed out the distinctions
between them (see P. Z. S. 1875, p. 470). These drawings are, as we
have every reason to believe, the originals from which the figures
(Plates XCVI. and XCVII. of the present work) were prepared by Smit.
In 1878 Sir John Kirk obtained from the Sultan of Zanzibar another
specimen of what he called the “Dwarf Kudu” from the southern part of
the Somali country, and sent it off to the Zoological Society (see P.
Z. S. 1878, p. 441). Unfortunately, however, the animal died on its way
home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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