“The skull is in all its proportions much smaller than that of C. bohor, but the palatine is, if anything, longer than in C. bohor.
“Height about 30 inches, hoofs on the bottom line 1½, fore legs 20, tail about 6, ear 6¼, horns along the curve nearly 6.”
After the description was made the specimen was unfortunately sent off to America before we had time to make a special examination of it. In reply to our enquiries, however, Mr. F. W. True, of the U.S. National Museum at Washington, has most kindly forwarded to us a large-sized black-and-white drawing of the head of this species, from which the accompanying reduction (fig. 43, p. 184) has been made by photography. In the absence of a coloured figure, this we trust will serve to make Chanler’s Reedbuck, if rediscovered, more easily recognizable by future travellers.
This is, we fear, nearly all that we can say respecting the present Antelope, of the claims of which to specific separation we are by no means certain. In fact, it appears to be doubtfully separable from C. fulvorufula, with which Mr. Rothschild did not compare it, and we should not have given it a separate heading had it not been for its very wide difference in locality. Up to the present time C. fulvorufula has not been found north of the Zambesi, while the district of British East Africa in which Mr. Chanler shot the type of this species lies nearly under the Equator.
Our knowledge of the proper position of this Antelope is mainly due to an accurate cast of the typical skull prepared by Messrs. Rowland Ward & Co., and generously presented by them to the National Museum.
P.S.—Since this was written Thomas has examined some examples of Chanler’s Reedbuck obtained by Mr. F. J. Jackson in British East Africa, probably near the Ravine Station, where he is now resident. So far as can be made out in their present condition, these specimens are very similar to the South-African C. fulvorufula, without special face-markings, and therefore confirm our view that C. chanleri cannot be well distinguished from its South-African relative.
February, 1897.
Genus III. PELEA.
(See p. 93.)
| Type. | |
| Pelea, Gray, P. Z. S. 1850, p. 126 | P. capreolus. |