Vernacular Name:—Korrigum in Bornou (Denham & Clapperton).
Size medium. General colour reddish fawn, with distinct black patches on face, shoulders, hips, and thighs. No dorsal dark line, and no dark markings on feet. Tail barely reaching to hock, its terminal third with a blackish crest along the top.
Skull heavily built; its basal length (♂) 14·8 inches, greatest breadth 5·7, muzzle to eye 10·8.
Horns thick, rising abruptly upwards and backwards from the skull, and evenly curving backwards, diverging as they go; their extreme tips showing a tendency to be recurved upwards. Good male horns are of a length over the curves of 21 inches.
This and the two next species are very closely allied in all their essential characters; but their colour-differences appear to be sufficiently constant in their respective localities to entitle them to specific recognition.
Hab. Senegambia and the interior of West Africa.
The Antelope described by Buffon, in his ‘Histoire Naturelle,’ as the “Koba”[7] or “Grande Vache Brune” of Senegal, has proved a great stumbling-block to naturalists. This has been largely due to the fact that Buffon appended to his description of the Koba the figure of some horns from a totally different source, and clearly of a different animal, which, indeed, we believe to have been simply those of the Pallah (Æpyceros melampus). Not noticing this confusion, many good authorities have identified the Koba with the present species, while others have been inclined to refer it, owing to the figure of the horns erroneously given by Buffon, to the Bontebok of the Cape and to other Antelopes. The description by itself is quite unrecognizable, and under the circumstances, as the matter must ever remain uncertain, the best course seems to be to ignore Buffon’s animal altogether, and to reject the specific names koba and senegalensis that have been founded upon it; although there can be no doubt that the Korrigum, as now described, is the Antilope and Damalis senegalensis of Children, Hamilton Smith, Gray, and many other authors.
This being decided, the proper name to adopt for this Antelope will be korrigum of Ogilby. Ogilby proposed this name in a communication made to the Zoological Society of London in 1836, basing it on the head and horns brought home from Bornou by Denham and Clapperton on their return from their celebrated expedition into Central Africa in 1822–24. This skull is still in the collection of the British Museum.
About the year 1840 Whitfield, a collector employed by Lord Derby to procure living animals for his private Menagerie, obtained specimens of the Korrigum from the vicinity of Macarthy’s Island on the River Gambia, and brought them safely to Knowsley. Here they seem to have thriven and reproduced their kind, for on reference to the ‘Gleanings’ (published in 1850) there will be found a beautiful coloured figure by Waterhouse Hawkins of a mother and young of this Antelope drawn from life. It is a great misfortune that so few records were ever kept or, at all events, ever published of the many fine and rare animals living in this splendid collection. In the Derby Museum, now at Liverpool, are two mounted specimens of this Antelope—we believe the only perfect examples in this country. They are, no doubt, individuals formerly living in the Knowsley Menagerie.
Herr Matschie is inclined to believe that certain specimens of a Damaliscus recently obtained by German collectors on the north and west of Lake Victoria should be referred to the present species, and not to D. jimela. This, if correct, would indicate a much greater extension of the area of the Korrigum towards the east than we should consider to be probable, and further evidence on the subject is much wanted.