The book of antelopes, vol. 4 (of 4)Sclater, Philip Lutley
Science
The book of antelopes, vol. 4 (of 4)
Sclater, Philip Lutley
Antelopes
It was not, therefore, until 1884 that good specimens of the Lesser
Kudu were received in Europe, and a proper comparison could be made
between it and the larger and better-known species. This was done by
Sclater, and the results were stated in a communication made to the
Zoological Society on February 5th of that year. Sclater’s materials
were mainly a pair of animals which he had seen alive in the previous
October in the menagerie of his friend the late Mons. J. M. Cornély,
of Château Beaujardin, Tours. The young male of this pair, having
died, was kindly sent to London by M. Cornély and formed the subject
of a plate, drawn by Smit, which accompanies Sclater’s article on this
animal in the Zoological Society’s ‘Proceedings.’ On the occasion of
reading his paper, Sclater was likewise able to exhibit an adult head
of the Lesser Kudu which had been sent home by Sir John Kirk, and a
pair of horns of a rather younger male of the same animal, belonging to
Mons. Cornély, which had been received by him through Mr. Hagenbeck, of
Hamburg, from Somaliland, along with the living pair of animals just
mentioned.
[Illustration:
Fig. 115.
Horns of Lesser and Greater Kudus.
(P. Z. S. 1884, p. 47.)
]
By the kind favour of the Zoological Society we are enabled to
reproduce here (fig. 115, p. 188) the comparative illustration of the
horns of two species of Kudu which accompanies Sclater’s paper on this
subject in the Society’s ‘Proceedings.’
Mr. E. Lort Phillips, F.Z.S., appears to have been one of the first
English sportsmen who personally met with the Lesser Kudu in Somaliland
and realized its difference from the Greater Kudu. This was in the
winter of 1884–85, when Mr. Lort Phillips visited that country along
with Messrs. James, Aylmer, and Thrupp. In his notes on the Antelopes
obtained during this journey (see P. Z. S. 1885, p. 931), Mr. Lort
Phillips informs us that the Lesser Kudu was met with on the northern
slopes of the high plateau of Northern Somaliland, where it resorts to
thick covert, and that it was not usually found far from water. Since
that date most, if not all, of the numerous British shooting-parties in
Somaliland have succeeded in obtaining heads of this beautiful species.
Capt. Swayne, our leading authority on the Antelopes of Somaliland,
writes of the Lesser Kudu as follows:—
“This is, to my mind, quite the most beautiful of all the Somali
Antelopes, and the skin is more brilliantly marked and the body
more gracefully shaped than that of the Greater Koodoo.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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