Skull much roughened and swollen in the frontal region; muzzle rather short and conical; median notch of palate but little deeper than the lateral ones.
Horns (♂) conical, very thick at the base, their greatest basal diameter going barely two and a half times in their length, which in an old individual is 3·1 inches.
Dimensions:—Skull, basal length 5·9 inches, greatest breadth 3, muzzle to orbit 3·3.
Hab. British East Africa (Kilimanjaro district) and Southern Somaliland.
In Harvey’s Duiker we have a third species of the smaller-sized section of this group of Duikers which, although, like the two preceding, of nearly uniform colour as regards the body, has a distinct black blaze on the face, in which character it resembles C. nigrifrons of the West Coast of Africa. So closely allied, however, are all the Duikers of the present section that, as will be seen from our list of synonyms, Harvey’s Duiker was associated first of all with C. natalensis and afterwards with C. nigrifrons, before it was recognized by Thomas as having good claims to constitute an independent species. Thomas took his characters, which were published in the ‘Annals of Natural History’ in 1893, from a head obtained by Mr. F. J. Jackson in the Kilimanjaro district some years ago, and subsequently presented to the British Museum. In his chapter on “Game Districts and Routes,” in the first volume of ‘Big Game Shooting,’ we find that Mr. Jackson has mentioned the present species as met with along with the elephant in the dense and almost impenetrable forests near Taveta. At Mr. Jackson’s suggestion Thomas appropriately dedicated the present species to Sir Robert Harvey, whose repeated expeditions to East Africa have made us so well acquainted with the animals of that district.
Fig. 17.
Head of Harvey’s Duiker.
(From Mr. Jackson’s specimen.)
On re-examining the specimens at the British Museum, Thomas discovered that a skin obtained many years ago by Sir John Kirk near Malindi, on the coast of British East Africa, and previously referred erroneously to C. natalensis (owing to its having lost the fur off its face), likewise belongs to this species, which, as Mr. Jackson has informed us, does occur in a patch of forest about one day south-west of Malindi.