Hab. Maritime plains of Northern Somaliland.
As we have already mentioned in our account of the last species, the late Mr. F. L. James and his party, who visited Somaliland in 1884, appear to have been the first to bring to England examples of the two allied Gazelles of Somaliland. Unfortunately, however, though perhaps not unnaturally, Sclater, who assisted Mr. E. Lort Phillips in the determination of the Mammals obtained during that expedition, referred the coast-land specimens to Gazella spekei, and described the examples from the high plateau as belonging to a new species, Gazella naso. About two years later, however, this error was corrected by Herr H. F. Kohl, of the Natural History Museum of Vienna, who, in an article upon new and rare Antelopes collected by Herr L. Menges in Somaliland, among which examples of both these Gazelles were comprised, rightly referred the upland species to Gazella spekei of Blyth and gave to the lowland species, then still unnamed, the title of Gazella pelzelni, after the late August von Pelzeln, a well-known naturalist, who was at that time Custos of the Imperial Museum of Natural History.
Thomas, in his article on the Antelopes collected in Somaliland by Mr. T. W. H. Clarke, published in the Zoological Society’s ‘Proceedings’ for 1891, was the first to make this matter perfectly clear, and to establish the name Gazella pelzelni as the permanent designation of the coast-land Gazelle of Somaliland. Since that date the distinctions between the two allied species have become well recognized and understood, and numerous examples of both species have been obtained by the naturalists and sportsmen who have recently visited that country.
Capt. Swayne, in his well-known work on Somaliland and its wild animals (from which, by the kind permission of Messrs. Rowland Ward & Co., the publishers, we have been allowed to borrow illustrations of the heads of both sexes of this Gazelle), tells us that the “short-coated, light-coloured Lowland Gazelle” carries rather longer horns than those of the Plateau Gazelle (Gazella spekei), which are “shorter, thicker, more curved, and better annulated.” “The habits of both,” he continues, “are nearly alike; they go in moderate-sized herds of from three to ten, and resort mostly to stony or sandy undulating ground or ravines thinly dotted over with mimosas. Both species are fond of salt and do not require water. It is hard to understand what they can pick up to eat in the wretched ground which they frequent. They have a curiosity which amounts almost to impudence, but are wonderfully on the alert, and hard to shoot, seeming to know perfectly well the range of a rifle, and presenting but a very small target.”
Capt. R. Light, writing to Sclater in 1892, tells us that when he visited Somaliland in 1891 he found this Gazelle between Berbera and Zeila, close down by the sea: “they were often observed feeding side by side with camels and flocks of sheep and goats. When startled they move off the ground in a quick trot, taking bounds over any obstacles and finally breaking into a gallop.”
Fig. 65.
Head of Pelzeln’s Gazelle, ♂.
(From Swayne’s ‘Somaliland,’ p. 317.)
