Vernacular Name:—Bush-Goat of Liberian Negroes (Büttikofer).
Size medium. Colour of body uniform dark smoky brown or black, becoming darker on the rump and limbs; paler on the throat and chest. Face fulvous, darkening into rich rufous on the crest; the centre of the forehead sometimes brown or black. Ears black haired externally, rufous internally. Tail black above, but with a whitish terminal tuft.
Skull long and narrow. Forehead swollen; anteorbital fossæ rather shallow; mesial notch of palate about ¼ inch in advance of lateral ones.
Horns, in male, “straight, rough at their base, smooth and pointed at their extremity, 3–3½ inches in length” (Temminck, l.c.): in female short, barely an inch in length, blunt and rounded, not expanded basally.
Dimensions:—(♂). Approximate height at withers 18 inches, length of hind foot 8·3, of ear 2·8.
Skull (♀): basal length (c.) 6·8, greatest breadth 3·3, anterior edge of orbit to muzzle 4·2.
Hab. West Coast of Africa, from Liberia to the Gold Coast.
The well-known field-naturalist Pel, one of the many excellent collectors employed from time to time by the Leyden Museum, was the discoverer of this Duiker, of which he transmitted specimens home from the Guinea coast about the year 1843. Shortly afterwards the British Museum acquired one of Pel’s specimens from Leyden under the MS. name “Antilope niger.” This was described by Gray in 1846 as the type of a new species, “The Black Bush-buck (Cephalophus niger).” Gray added to his description that there was then living in the Knowsley Menagerie a “Bush-buck” which was probably of the same species; and on turning to the pictures in the ‘Gleanings from the Derby Menagerie’ we find what is doubtless the animal referred to, figured upon a plate (vii. fig. 2) which is initialed by Waterhouse Hawkins as having been drawn in 1846. So far as we know, this is the only individual of this Antelope that has ever been brought to Europe alive.
Although Gray had taken the name which he received with this animal from the Leyden Museum and had employed it throughout in his catalogues, Temminck, the then Director of that great establishment, when he published his ‘Esquisses Zoologiques sur la Côte de Guiné’ in 1855, was not content to adopt it. He considered it “too vague,” as having been already applied to other species of Antelopes, and proposed to change it to Cephalophus pluto. Temminck informs us that this species is widely distributed on the coast of Guinea and is very common in the forests near the Dutch factories in that district, particularly in Ashantee, near Chama and Dabacrom.
In the adjoining republic of Liberia, to the west of the Gold Coast, Mr. Büttikofer and his colleagues Sala and Stampfli obtained many specimens of this Duiker during their expeditions of 1879 and 1886. Dr. Jentink, in cataloguing their results, gives various localities in which it was met with—viz. at St. Paul’s River, Schieffelinsville, Junk River, Du Queah River, and Farmington River. The Liberian naturalists remark that the flesh of this Antelope has a remarkably strong bitter flavour, which they never observed in any other species of the group. This peculiarity is probably caused by some special food to which it is addicted.