Cephalophus spadix, True, Pr. U.S. Nat. Mus. xiii. p. 227 (1890); id. op. cit. xv. p. 473, pl. lxxviii. (animal), pl. lxxix. (skull) (1892); Thos. P. Z. S. 1892, p. 418; Lyd. Horns and Hoofs, p. 209 (1893); Jackson, in Badm. Libr. Big Game Shooting, i. p. 285 (1894).
Size comparatively large. General colour dusky chestnut-brown without spots or bands, and not lighter on the belly. Forehead dusky brown, like body; chin and throat pale greyish brown. Hairs of crest chestnut-red at the base, and tipped with black: mingled with them are some hairs which are dusky throughout, and others pure white. Anterior surfaces of the legs somewhat lighter than the posterior surfaces. Tail dusky, except at the tip, where there are a few pure white hairs.
Skull elongate; muzzle slender; frontal region strongly convex.
Horns “directed backwards, and lying below the plane of the upper surface of the skull”; those of male 4½ inches long; slender, straight, not thickened at the base in front.
Dimensions:—♂. Head and body 38 inches, ear 4¼, hind foot (hoof to hock) 9½.
Skull: basal length, from occipital condyle, 8·5 inches; greatest breadth 4; nasals, length 3·7.
This description has been compiled from Mr. True’s two notices and from his figures of the animal and its skull, as we have not as yet had any opportunity of seeing examples of the species, of which no specimen has come to Europe.
Hab. East Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro, at high elevations (Abbott).
We now proceed to consider the smaller Duikers of the section with horns slanting backwards. These are generally of a rufous colour, varied by more or less intense dark markings on the face and dorsal line, only C. doriæ, which we place by itself, having the back transversely barred.
Sir John Willoughby’s volume on ‘East Africa and its Big Game’ gives an excellent account of the adventures of himself and a party of friends during a shooting-expedition to the hunting-grounds of Kilimanjaro and its neighbourhood, and of the great variety and enormous quantity of the larger mammals to be met with, a few years ago, in that district. In an appendix to the volume, contributed by Mr. H. C. V. Hunter, F.Z.S., is added a systematic account of the principal mammals met with on the plains round Kilimanjaro and on the mountain itself, amongst which we find recorded such splendid Antelopes as the Eland, Koodoo, Oryx, Hartebeest, Gnu, Pallah, Waterbuck, Reedbuck, and three kinds of Gazelle. At the close of the list Mr. Hunter notes the occurrence, high up on Kilimanjaro, of a species of Cephalophus “of a dark red colour, much larger than the Common Duiker (C. grimmi). A male of this probably new Antelope, it is stated, had been killed by Dr. Abbott.” This, so far as we know, is the first published mention of the species of which we now speak as Abbott’s Duiker.