Dimensions:—♂. Approximate height at withers 19 inches, ear 2·3, hind foot 9·2.
Skull: basal length 6·3 inches, greatest breadth 3·1, muzzle to orbit 3·6.
Hab. Coast of Western Africa from Cameroons to Gaboon.
Although the great wood-region of Western Africa has been repeatedly visited by naturalists since the days of Afzelius in the last century, and many collections have been formed there, very little has been recorded respecting the habits of the mammals of this part of the continent. The reason of this, no doubt, is mainly the impenetrable nature of the forests and bush which cover the whole country and which allow much fewer observations to be made upon the habits and peculiarities of the animals than in the more open and easily traversed districts of the Ethiopian Region. Of the present and several other species of this genus of Antelopes, for example, we shall see that very little information can be given except what results from the examination of their skins and skulls brought home as specimens for our museums.
Fig. 18.
Skull of Cephalophus nigrifrons.
(P. Z. S. 1871, p. 598.)
Like Harvey’s Duiker of Eastern Africa, the Black-fronted Duiker, which is its representative and close ally in the great western wood-region, carries a coat of a nearly uniform chestnut. Like C. harveyi, also, it has a distinct black blaze down the centre of the face, whence the appropriate name C. nigrifrons has been bestowed on it. Its distinctions from Harvey’s Duiker, as pointed out by Thomas, are that it is of a much more uniform colour all over and hardly paler below, while in the last-named species the cheeks, sides of the neck, and throat are of a pale bay, and the chin is white as in C. natalensis. Its most striking characteristic is, however, the fact that its hoofs are very much longer than is usual in the genus, an elongation which is probably due to its inhabiting marshy and boggy regions, where its long hoofs would prevent its sinking so deeply as it otherwise would into the muddy soil.
The typical specimens of this Duiker formed part of the collection made by Mr. DuChaillu during his celebrated visit to the Gaboon in 1856 and the following years, the greater part of which were ultimately acquired by the British Museum. On reference to the ‘Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa’ of DuChaillu we can find no reference to it, unless, as is probable, it is alluded to as one of the “four species of Gazelle not yet determined,” which are enumerated in the appendix. When, however, DuChaillu’s specimens came under the experienced eye of the late Dr. Gray, on the occasion of his preparing a monograph of the genus Cephalophus (subsequently published in the Zoological Society’s ‘Proceedings’ for 1871), it was quickly discovered that amongst them was a representative of a new and distinct species of the present genus, which was described and figured as C. nigrifrons. In a subsequent communication to the ‘Annals of Natural History’ in 1871, Dr. Gray described a specimen of what he believed to be another new species of Cephalophus under the name of C. aureus. On this occasion he tells us that the specimens, both of his C. nigrifrons and of his C. aureus, “had been sent home from Africa by Mr. DuChaillu as materials for stuffing out the skin of a specimen” of a larger Antelope (Tragelaphus euryceros). We believe it to be the fact that, as Sclater was assured by the late Dr. Gray, he described four new species of Antelopes from skins found in the interior of this Tragelaphus when it was unstuffed for the purpose of being remounted for the collection of the British Museum. As regards the so-called C. aureus, however, a close examination of the typical specimen, made by Thomas in 1892, convinced him that it was a very young animal and was probably only an immature individual of the present species. We may observe, however, that its body is far brighter and more fulvous than that of the adult, that the withers and shoulders are browner, and that the caudal tuft is more abundantly mixed with white.