Vernacular Name:—Reem of Arabs of Nejd (Jayakar).
Closely allied to G. subgutturosa, with which it shares the substitution of white for the dark colour of the central facial band, the general plan of coloration, and the curvature of the horns. Size, however, very markedly smaller. General colour pale fawn. Facial markings almost obsolete; when distinguishable they are only of the general body-colour and very slightly defined from the paler bands between them. Ears long, their backs whitish fawn. Pale lateral band scarcely visible; dark lateral band and pygal band pale brown, little marked, scarcely darker than the dorsal colour. Limbs whitish throughout; distinct knee-tufts present.
Skull and horns, so far as the male is concerned, very much as in G. subgutturosa, although much smaller. Basal length of skull (in an old male) 6·1 inches, greatest breadth 3·15, muzzle to orbit 3·45.
Female. Similar, but horns only from 3 to 5 inches in length, slender, straight or slightly curved.
Hab. Arabian Desert, from Nejd in Central Arabia to Western Oman.
This little Gazelle is a recent discovery of Surgeon Lieut.-Col. A. S. G. Jayakar, C.M.Z.S., who has been for many years resident at Muscat in the service of the British Indian Government. Surgeon Jayakar, whose magnificent collections of Muscat fishes are known to all ichthyologists, has during the past years collected and presented to the National Museum several consignments of mammals from this little-known country. Of these Thomas published an account in the ‘Proceedings’ of the Zoological Society for 1894, the most remarkable of them being a new Wild Goat, from the Akhdar Range behind Muscat, which was named Hemitragus jayakari after its discoverer. In 1897 the British Museum received from Surgeon Jayakar another consignment of mammals collected at Muscat within the previous two years. In this last series, besides the Oman specimens which were referable to species already recorded in Thomas’s paper, there were several skins and skulls of the present Gazelle, obtained from the Nejd or Nedsched Desert in the interior of Arabia. Thomas established his Gazella marica upon these examples.
In a letter addressed to Thomas, Dr. Jayakar says that four of the “Reem Gazelles” were from the Nejd Desert and one from Dahireh, the north-western district of Oman. “It is probable,” he continues, “that the species extends down to the desert behind Oman, as that is continuous with the Nejd Desert.” Surgeon Jayakar subsequently presented to the Museum a sixth (female) specimen from Aboor near Adam in Oman.
The Marica Gazelle is clearly a close relative of the Persian Gazelle, which it seems to represent in Arabia. But it is considerably smaller in size, paler in colour, and is nearly free from face-markings, besides having horns in the female sex. This last point is interesting, as it shows how little importance, in a generic sense, should be attributed to the presence or absence of horns in the female of an Antelope; for it appears that this species, in which the horns are present in the female, is unquestionably more nearly related to one in which the horns are absent in the female than to the group of Gazella dorcas, in which the horns are developed in both sexes.
In February, 1892, the Zoological Society of London received as a gift from Lt.-Col. Talbot, then British resident at Muscat, along with a Beatrix Antelope (Oryx beatrix), a small female Gazelle, with the information that it had been obtained from the Bahrein Islands, in the Persian Gulf. Sclater was at first much puzzled to give a name to this Gazelle, but after some hesitation came to the conclusion that it might be a small female of the Indian Gazella bennetti, which is known to extend along the coast of Baluchistan nearly to the Persian Gulf, and accordingly entered it in the Society’s Register[7] under that name. This animal, however, which is still living in the Society’s Gardens, is undoubtedly a female of the present species. On reference to the late Theodore Bent’s paper on the Bahrein Islands (P. R. G. S. xii. p. 8, 1890) it will be found stated that on the desert which occupies the greater part of the largest island of the group “a small Gazelle is abundant,” and is often hunted by the Bahreini Arabs with hawk and hounds. There can be little doubt that this Gazelle is G. marica.
Our illustration of the Marica Gazelle (Plate LVI.) has been taken by Mr. Smit from the typical specimen from Nejd in the British Museum, and represents an adult male.