Essential characters as in B. buselaphus, but larger in all its dimensions.
“Body of a uniform greyish brown; face deep brown; fore legs streaked with dark brown or blackish from the knees downwards. Terminal tuft of tail black.
“Frontal bone between the base of the horns and orbit convex, the same part being remarkably flat in other species.” (Brooke, MS.)
Facial length 17½ inches, muzzle to orbit 13, breadth of forehead 4·4.
Horns curved as in the Bubal, but longer and heavier, their length round the curves amounting to over 20 inches.
Hab. Gambia, Lower Niger district, and interior of Cameroons.
There can be no doubt of the existence of a Bubal allied to B. buselaphus in several districts on the West Coast of Africa. But there are no perfect specimens of this Antelope at present available for comparison, and its distinctness from its northern representative may still be a matter of some uncertainty, although we have good reason to believe that the two species will ultimately prove to be specifically different.
The well-known naturalist Edward Blyth, for many years Curator of the Indian Museum, Calcutta, and a good authority on the larger Mammals, was the first writer to call attention to the existence of this Antelope. In a communication made to the Zoological Society in 1869, Blyth states that he had examined a “perfect skin” of what he at once recognized as a “distinct though closely allied species,” differing from B. buselaphus “in being fully as large as a Hartebeest, and in having black markings in front of all four feet above the hoofs.” Blyth’s opinion was that some mounted specimens which he saw in the Museums of Leyden and Amsterdam referred to B. buselaphus belonged strictly to this new form. He also exhibited on the same occasion a pair of frontlets belonging to Ward, of Vere Street, as referable to what he proposed to designate Boselaphus major. These frontlets, which were subsequently figured in the Society’s ‘Proceedings,’ are now in the British Museum.
Fig. 1 a.