Skull and horns of Damaliscus hunteri, ♂ ad.

(P. Z. S. 1889, p. 374.)

Fig. 7 c.

Skull and horns of Damaliscus hunteri, ♀ ad.

(P. Z. S. 1889, p. 375.)

Hunter’s Antelope has been called after its discoverer Mr. H. C. V. Hunter, F.Z.S., who met with it under the following circumstances:—

In the year after Sir Robert Harvey’s celebrated sporting-expedition to Kilimanjaro (in 1886–87), of which Sir John Willoughby has given us the history in his well-known volume on ‘East Africa and its Big Game,’ Sir Robert returned to Mombasa in company with Mr. Greenfield and Mr. Hunter, and, after another visit to the “Hunter’s Paradise of Taveta,” near Kilimanjaro, made a second trip, in quest of sport, up the valley of the River Tana, which forms the northern boundary of the dominions of the Imperial British East-African Company. Of this excursion Sir Robert prepared a short account, which has been printed as an appendix to the above-mentioned work. The party arrived at the mouth of the Tana in September, and proceeded up the river in boats to Golbanto, where they were hospitably received at the mission-station on the river. Leaving Golbanto on September 28th they reached, about ten days later, a village called Durani, some 150 miles from the mouth of the river. Here on the north bank Mr. Hunter, on October 16th, shot the first specimen of the Antelope which now bears his name, and immediately proceeded to take the photograph of its head, from which the accompanying engraving (fig. 7 a, p. 54) was taken. Other examples of this species were subsequently procured by Mr. Hunter and Mr. Greenfield. These include two heads (male and female) which are now in Sclater’s custody, and on which he established the species, and the mounted specimen which is now in the gallery of the British Museum. We are not aware that besides the examples procured on this occasion any other specimens of this rare and interesting Antelope have ever been brought to Europe.

The female Hunter’s Antelope differs from the male in its rather smaller size and in its longer and more slender horns, as shown in the accompanying woodcuts (figs. 7 b and 7 c) kindly lent to us by the Zoological Society of London.

Mr. Hunter’s field notes on this Antelope (as supplied by him to Sclater) are as follows:—