Skull measurements (♂):—Basal length 9·5 inches, greatest breadth 4·45, orbit to muzzle 5·9.
Hab. W. Africa, from the Gambia to the Niger.
In the twelfth volume of his celebrated ‘Histoire Naturelle,’ the great French naturalist Buffon distinguished two Antelopes from Senegal as the “Koba” and the “Kob.” Of the difficulties experienced by subsequent authors in deciding what Buffon’s “Koba” really was, we have already spoken in our article on Damaliscus korrigum (Vol. I. p. 60). But as regards the “Kob” there can, we think, be no question that Buffon’s “Kob, ou petit vache brune de Sénégal” is clearly the same as that which we now call Cobus kob, and propose to designate in English “Buffon’s Kob,” to distinguish it from its fellows of the same group.
Erxleben, in 1777, seems to have been the first writer to Latinize Buffon’s vernacular name as “Antilope kob.” In this he was followed by most of the early systematists, who, however, added nothing to our knowledge of the animal. Little more, in fact, was known of this Antelope until about 1827, when a fresh description of it was published by Hamilton Smith in Griffith’s edition of Cuvier’s ‘Animal Kingdom,’ taken from a pair of animals then living in the Menagerie at Exeter Change. Colonel Hamilton Smith, being uncertain whether this was the true “Kob” of Buffon, gave it a new name, adenota, derived from the small gland situated on its back ἀδἡν, glandula, and νῶτος, dorsum). There can be no doubt, however, that Hamilton Smith’s description of his Antilope adenota, which is accompanied by a very fair figure of the male, refers to Buffon’s Kob. Another name bestowed upon this Antelope by Hamilton Smith, in the same work, was Antilope forfex, based on Pennant’s “Gambian Antelope.”
The first specimen of the Kob Antelope that reached Europe alive, so far as we know, was that presented to the Zoological Society of London by Mr. John Foster in 1836, which was subsequently figured in Fraser’s ‘Zoologia Typica’ (plate xx.). Fraser tells us that it lived about three years in the Society’s Gardens. This is no doubt the specimen that is referred to by Ogilby as the “Kob of Buffon” in his remarks printed in the ‘Proceedings of the Zoological Society’ for 1836 (page 102). Although Ogilby’s references to it are not very comprehensible, this fact is clearly established by what Fraser says in his ‘Zoologia Typica.’
Shortly after this period living specimens of this Antelope were obtained at the Gambia and brought home for the Knowsley Menagerie by Whitfield, Lord Derby’s collector. Upon these animals Gray established his Antilope annulipes in 1842, but in the letterpress to the ‘Gleanings’ Gray admitted that they were really referable to the present species. Gray states that a fine pair “had been at Knowsley for some years,” and adds that they are called on the Gambia “Æquitoon” by the Joliffs and “Kob” by the Mandingos. On plates xiv. and xv. of the ‘Gleanings’ good coloured figures of the male, female, and young of this species will be found, taken from drawings made from life by Waterhouse Hawkins. From this it would appear that the Kob, like many other Antelopes, bred in those days at Knowsley.
We cannot ascertain that any living examples of the Kob have been received by the Zoological Society subsequently to that obtained in 1836 as already mentioned; but a female, which was formerly living in the Zoological Garden of Amsterdam, is now in the gallery of the Leyden Museum, and in August 1895 Sclater saw a fine male of this species in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris (see P. Z. S. 1895, p. 688) and another male in the private collection of the late Mr. Sharland at Tours. These two animals, we have been informed, were imported together from West Africa.
From Senegal and the Gambia the Kob extends through the interior of West Africa to Togoland, where it has been obtained by the German collectors inland from Bismarckburg and far into the Niger territory. As regards the latter locality, Sclater has examined a pair of horns of the Kob obtained by Capt. A. F. Mockler-Ferryman at Ibi, on the Benué, in the autumn of 1889, when he was travelling with Major Claude Macdonald’s expedition up that river; and Capt. Mockler-Ferryman has kindly supplied us with the following note on them:—“The Antelopes, from a male of which this pair of horns were taken, were fairly plentiful everywhere in the open park-like country of the Benué, and, so far as I can remember, were exactly similar in habits to Vardon’s Antelope, as described by Selous. These horns measure 17½ inches in length along the curve. The females of this Antelope had no horns.”
In 1895 Capt. Lugard during his expedition to Bornu obtained a skin and two skulls of this Antelope at Lukoja on the Niger, and presented them to the British Museum. It was the examination of Capt. Lugard’s specimens that first convinced Thomas that the Uganda Kob (subsequently named Cobus thomasi) belongs to a different species. The specimens previously in the National Collection (a male and female from the Gambia, collected by Whitfield) were both immature, and consequently of little use for accurate comparison.
Our figure of Buffon’s Kob (Plate XL.) was lithographed for Sir Victor Brooke by Smit from a coloured drawing by Wolf, but we have not been able to ascertain from what specimen the drawing was originally taken.