Kobus, sp. inc., Scl. P. Z. S. 1864, p. 103 (Uganda).
Reedbuck, Hunter, in Willoughby’s E. Africa, p. 289 (1889).
Vernacular Names:—Xondieh in Arabic; Behor or Bohor in Amharic (Rüppell & Heuglin); Oboor of the Madi (Baku, fide Günther); Käo in Dinka; Pohr in Djur; Jalo in Bongo; Joro in Niam-Niam; Ngallah in Golo; Djiang in Ssebre (Schweinfurth); Njasa in Uganda (Lugard); Porhi in Swahili (Hunter), also Toi or Tohi (Jackson).
Nearly similar to C. arundinum, but decidedly smaller, and with the horn more hooked at their tip. As the hooked tip, however, gradually wears off, and the horns grow up straight from their bases, even this difference tends to disappear in quite adult specimens. The horns attain a length of from 10 to 13 inches. The tail is rather shorter and less bushy than in C. arundinum, and the black markings of the limbs are less defined than in well-marked examples of that species. In the general colour there is also less difference between the head and the body than in C. arundinum, both being fawn-coloured.
Skull dimensions of an old male:—Basal length 9 inches, greatest breadth 4·3, muzzle to orbit 5·35.
Female. Like the male, but hornless.
Hab. Abyssinia and East Africa, southward to Kilimanjaro.
The great explorer of Abyssinia, Rüppell, was the first to obtain specimens of the Reedbuck in that country, although its existence there had, perhaps, been vaguely alluded to by Bruce in his ‘Travels.’ Rüppell was at first inclined to refer the Abyssinian animal, which he met with in the plains of Woggara, to C. redunca, but at a later period, when he had had an opportunity of comparing its skull with that of the West-African species, came to the conclusion that it was distinct, and changed its specific name to “bohor.” “Cervicapra bohor” has therefore been generally adopted as the appellation of the East-African Reedbuck, although, as yet, we are far from being well acquainted with this animal and the points of its distinctions from its congeners.
Heuglin, in his memoir on the Antelopes of North-east Africa, enumerates this species still under the name redunca of Pallas, but quotes the plate of Antilope bohor in Rüppell’s ‘Atlas,’ and gives its native Amharic name as “Behor.” Heuglin met with it in small troops in the bushy plains and hills of the provinces of Woggara, Dembea, Begemeger, and Foggara in Abyssinia, at a height of from six to eight hundred feet above the sea-level. Heuglin was not certain as to having encountered this Antelope in the districts west of the Nile, but believed that a female specimen which he obtained in November 1853, in Southern Kordofan, must have belonged to it. According to Dr. Günther (P. Z. S. 1890, p. 607), Sir Samuel Baker met with the Bohor among the Madi tribes on the White Nile between 4° and 2° 30´ N. lat., and supplied him with a sketch of the skull which enabled him to identify the species.
We have as yet no records of any Reedbuck having been obtained in Somaliland, but when we go further south to British East Africa we have good evidence from several trustworthy observers of its existence in that country. It is a difficult question, however, and one which is by no means yet decided, whether the East-African Reedbuck is the same as the Abyssinian “Bohor.”