Antilope villosa, Burch. Trav. ii. p. 302 (1824); id. List of Mamm. pres. to B. M. p. 5 (1825) (Swellendam, Nov. 19, 1814); H. Sm. Griff. An. K. iv. p. 241, v. p. 339 (1827); Less. Compl. Buff. x. p. 290 (1836); Gerv. Dict. Sci. Nat. i. p. 262 (1840); Less. N. Tabl. R. A., Mamm. p. 177 (1842).
Eleotragus villosus, Gray, List Mamm. B. M. p. 165 (1843).
Vernacular Names:—Rhébok or Vaal Rhébok of Dutch and English Colonists; Peeli of Bechuanas (Burchell and others); Iza of Zulus (Rendall).
Height at withers about 29 or 30 inches. General form comparatively slender and delicate. Fur soft and woolly, though not very thick. Colour dull pale grey all over, the head and limbs tending rather towards fawn-colour. Ears very long and narrow, their backs grey. Throat and belly similar to and scarcely paler than the back; chin, however, with a distinct blackish patch. Lower part of limbs slightly and inconspicuously darker in front. Tail reaching to about the level of the groin, rather bushy; fawn-grey above near the body, white below and at the end.
Horns slender, barely 2½ inches in circumference at the base, strongly ringed on their lower half, smooth at the tips; rising nearly vertically, and slightly curving forwards. In length they ordinarily attain to about 8 or 9 inches, though some of 11½ inches have been recorded.
Dimensions of an old male skull:—Basal length 7·35 inches, greatest breadth 3·95, muzzle to orbit 5.
Female. Like the male, but hornless.
Hab. S. Africa, south of the Zambesi.
Closely allied to the Reedbucks, and, in fact, hardly differing from them in general structure, except in its nearly straight horns and the want of the naked patch beneath the ears, is the Vaal Rhébok of the South-African colonists, so named by the Dutch settlers from its fancied resemblance to the Roebuck of Europe (Capreolus caprea), and so called by Le Vaillant, Sparrman, and the older authors. Bechstein in 1799 appears to be the first author who gave it a scientific name, and he wisely chose for it that of “capreolus” following the precedent of the vernacular. In this he was followed by Thunberg, Afzelius, and other subsequent writers on the Antelopes, and the name has been mostly accepted and appended to the generic term Pelea bestowed upon it by Gray in 1850, taken from “Peeli,” the Bechuana name of this Antelope.
In 1822, however, Desmoulins, in his article on Antelopes in the ‘Dictionnaire Classique d’Histoire Naturelle,’ redescribed the species as Antilope lanata, from specimens transmitted to Paris from the Cape by Delalande; and two years subsequently Burchell, who had met with this Antelope during his travels in Bechuanaland, gave it the new name Antilope villosa; but neither of these appellations has attained much circulation.