Hairs of face reversed upwards for only about 1½ inch on the tip of the muzzle, then directed downwards from a whorl just below the bases of the horns. Glandular suborbital brushes prominent.
Skull of medium proportions; its measurements as follows:—basal length 14·5 inches, greatest breadth 5·5, muzzle to orbit 8·3, facial length 14, breadth of forehead 3·5.
Horns bracket-shaped, the median portion of each in nearly the same straight line as that of its fellow; terminal portion very short. In length good male horns attain to about 18 inches.
Hab. Interior of Northern Somaliland and Shoa.
Although this fine Hartebeest was pursued and slain by several energetic hunters before Captain Swayne met with it in Somaliland, it is to the last-named distinguished explorer that we are indebted for our first perfect specimens and for an account of its range and habits, and it is therefore appropriately named after him.
The first evidence received of the occurrence of a Hartebeest in Somaliland was a flat native skin contained in a collection brought home by Herr Menges along with a lot of living animals imported for Mr. Hagenbeck, of Hamburg. In some notes on these skins (P. Z. S. 1884, p. 539) Sclater referred the specimen in question to B. caama. Again, Mr. E. Lort Phillips, F.Z.S., who was one of Mr. James’s party in Somaliland in the winter of 1885, shot a single young male Hartebeest near the northern boundary of the high plateau south of Berbera in April of that year (see P. Z. S. 1885, p. 932), but unfortunately lost the skull which he had preserved, and did not meet with the species again.
The next record of this Hartebeest is from a different locality. The Italian naturalist Dr. Traversi in 1886 transmitted to Florence a Hartebeest’s head which, in his list of Traversi’s collection, Dr. Giglioli referred to B. caama. After examining the specimen in the Museum of Florence, and receiving a drawing of it from Dr. Giglioli, Sclater (see P. Z. S. 1892, p. 258) was able to assure himself that it was in all probability the same as B. swaynei of Somaliland.
In his “Field-notes” on the Antelopes of Somaliland (P. Z. S. 1892, p. 303) Captain Swayne furnishes us with an excellent account of this animal, which we now reproduce:—
“South of the highest ranges of Somaliland, and at a distance of about 100 miles from the coast, are open plains some four or five thousand feet above the sea-level, alternating with broken ground covered with thorn-jungle, with an undergrowth of aloes growing sometimes to a height of six feet.
“This elevated country, called the ‘Haud,’ is waterless for three months, from January to March; it was crossed by Mr. James’s party in 1884, when their camels were thirteen days without water.