Vernacular Names:—Kawe and Mburi or Mbuli of natives in the Cameroons; Nkaya and Nkoko on the Congo.
Adult male about 40 inches at the shoulder. Colour a dark rich, nearly chocolate, brown, becoming blacker upon the forehead, nose, throat, belly, and legs. Head with a white patch extending on to the nose from the inner corner of the eye on each side; two white cheek-spots and sometimes a pale patch above the eye; chin and rim of the upper lip white; two white patches on the throat, one at its upper, the other at its lower end. Body with dorsal line white; a row of white spots extending laterally above the belly, about six more or less defined white stripes on the flanks and haunches, and some white spots on the hind-quarters. Fore legs white on the inner side at the base; the fetlocks and pasterns whitish in front: hind limbs white in front of the knee and on the inner side of the cannon-bone down to the fetlocks; fetlocks and pasterns, like those of the fore limbs, whitish.
Horns with not more than two turns.
Female. Smaller than the male; of a rich chestnut-red, darker above than below; white markings on the head and body resembling those of the male in position and distinctness, but the spinal stripe black. Legs whitish on the inner sides below the knees and hocks; the outer sides dark in front down to the fetlock.
The skull of an adult male gives the following measurements:—Basal length 11·5 inches, orbit to muzzle 6·5, greatest width 4·75.
Hab. West Africa, from the Cameroons to the Congo.
The first allusion that we can find to the occurrence of a species of the Sitatunga-group on the West Coast of Africa is in the Zoological Society’s ‘Proceedings’ for 1848, where it is recorded that the Secretary exhibited, at the meeting on June 13th, the skull and horns of an Antelope closely allied to Antilope euryceros, Ogilby, and read a letter in reference to it received from Capt. William Allen, R.N. Capt. Allen described the appearance of the animal from memory only, but stated that he had himself obtained the specimen at a place called Kokki on the Cameroons River. The pair of horns in question are now in the British Museum, and belong, in all probability, to the present species.
In 1871 Sir Victor Brooke read an excellent paper on Speke’s Antelope and its allies before the Zoological Society of London. The list of specimens of his Tragelaphus spekii given in the ‘Proceedings’ contains examples of all three species of Limnotragus, as we here consider them. The figure (fig. 112, p. 167) of specimen “g” (which we are allowed to reproduce by the kindness of that Society) was taken, we believe, from a West-Coast example, and is therefore referable to L. gratus.
Fig. 112.