September, 1898.
102. THE BANDED GAZELLE.
GAZELLA NOTATA, THOS.
Gazella grantii notata, Thos. Ann. Mag. N. H. (6) xx. p. 479 (1897); A. Neumann, Elephant-Hunting in E. Africa, p. 238 (1898).
Only known from a single flat skin, without the head. Fur unusually long and shaggy. Size about as in G. granti, and general body-markings as in that species, but all much intensified. Dark and light lateral bands much longer and broader, the former nearly black and reaching forwards on to the shoulder, and backwards nearly to the white rump-mark; the latter pale buff, and succeeded above by a second dark band, lighter than the main lateral band, but distinctly darker than the centre of the back. This second dark band united with the other behind the posterior end of the light band. Pygal band black and very strongly defined.
Horns said by the discoverer to have been like those of G. granti.
Hab. Western slope of the Loroghi Mountains, British East Africa.
In Mr. Arthur H. Neumann’s recently published volume on ‘Elephant-Hunting in East Equatorial Africa’ there will be found an account of his adventurous journey to Lake Rudolph, during which, on more than one occasion, he made his camp for some months at El Bogoi, a place situated east of the Loroghi Mountains, in rather higher than 1° N. lat., which was a favourite station for elephants. While at this place in October 1895 Mr. Neumann, accompanied by his native attendants, made an excursion over the Loroghi range, and encamped close to the edge of the open country on their western slope, at an elevation reckoned to be about 5500 feet above the sea-level, at a place called in the map attached to his narrative Kisima. Here, on taking a stroll into the open, he “shot a brace” of what he at first supposed to be Grant’s Gazelles; but on examination he found that they differed from the Grant’s Gazelles of the other side of the range, and of everywhere else that he had been, “in having longer hair, and dark bands on the sides,” while the “shade on the back” was also deeper than in the common kind. On one of the skins thus obtained and presented to the British Museum (see fig. 80), Thomas has based his subspecies “Gazella grantii notata.”
For much the same reasons as in the case of G. petersi, that is because no intermediate examples were yet known, we decided, when drawing up our Synopsis of Gazelles (above, p. 69), to give a separate heading to this form.
Fig. 80.