“Several times I observed the new Gazelle and G. walleri feeding together, but I never saw more than eight in a bunch, and on that occasion there was a male G. soemmerringi with them.”
Mr. Clarke’s skulls of this Antelope, which were at the time without head-skins, having been submitted to Thomas for examination by Messrs. Rowland Ward and Co. (to whom Mr. Clarke had sent for preservation his specimens of Antelopes obtained during this expedition), were, on account of the shape of the horns, not unnaturally supposed to belong to a new species of Reedbuck, and named “Cervicapra clarkei”—a mistake which Thomas corrected in his later paper. Very shortly after Mr. Clarke’s specimens had been sent to Europe Capt. Swayne purchased of an Arab in the market at Berbera two pairs of horns of this Antelope with the head-skins attached, and, seeing that they belonged to a new species, sent them to Sclater. Sclater exhibited these specimens at a meeting of the Zoological Society on March 17th, 1891, and pointed out their Gazelline affinities, but finding that they belonged to the same species as that just named by Thomas handed them over to the latter for further examination.
In his paper upon this subject, which was read at the same meeting of the Zoological Society, Thomas took the opportunity of describing the whole series of Mr. Clarke’s Antelopes, which were eight in number. For Clarke’s Gazelle, of which, with the aid of the head-skins and the cleaned skulls, he had no difficulty in recognizing the true affinities, he established the new generic term “Ammodorcas,” and added a full description of this remarkable form, illustrated by two plates, one of which, by the kind permission of the Zoological Society, we are enabled to copy in the present work.
Fig. 83.
Head of the Dibatag, ♂.
(From P. Z. S. 1891, pl. xxi.)
As already pointed out, it is evident that in its skull-characters Ammodorcas is intermediate between Gazella and Lithocranius, while in the shape of its horns it is absolutely different from all other Gazelline genera.
Capt. Swayne, who has had the unequalled experience of seventeen visits to Somaliland, writing in 1894, says:—
“I have been singularly unfortunate with this Antelope, never having been in the country where it is found till I went to the Nogal Valley some three years ago. At that time the Jilal, or dry season, was at its height, and all the game was scarce and shy, so I never got a Dibatag till June 1893, when on my return journey from Ogádén, across the waterless plateau, I made a détour of several days to the east on purpose to shoot one for my collection.