In the British Museum, besides the old stuffed specimen received from the East Indian Museum, which may be considered the real type of Blyth’s species, there is mounted in one of the large glass-cases in the Gallery the young male presented by Mons. Cornély to Sclater and figured in the Zoological Society’s ‘Proceedings,’ as already mentioned. This was subsequently presented by Sclater to the National Collection. In the same glass-case there are also mounted a fine adult male from Somaliland, presented by Mr. R. McD. Hawker, and a female from British East Africa, presented by Mr. Rowland Ward. There are also skins and skulls in the Museum presented by Sir John Kirk, Col. Paget, Capt. Swayne, and other donors.
Our drawing of this beautiful Antelope (Plate XCVII.) was put upon the stone by Mr. Smit from the sketch made for Sir Victor Brooke by Wolf in 1875, of which we have already spoken.
April, 1900.
Genus V. TAUROTRAGUS.
| Type. | |
| Oreas, Desm. Mamm. ii. p. 471 (1822) (nec Hübner, 1806) | T. oryx. |
| Taurotragus, Wagn. Schr. Säug., Suppl. v. p. 439 (1855) | T. oryx. |
| Doratoceros, Lyd. Field, lxxviii. p. 130 (1891) | T. oryx. |
Very large, heavily-built, bovine Antelopes, differing from the rest of the Tragelaphinæ in the presence of horns in both sexes. Horns longer than the face, arising well behind the orbits and directed backwards in the plane of the nasal bones, massive (in the male) and furnished with a strong but close spiral twist in the basal half; the anterior crest large, making a complete circuit of the horn and reappearing on its anterior surface near the middle when the horn is unworn, and always at some distance from the tip.
Hair on the forehead longer than on the rest of the head, and forming, in old males, a thick and stiff mat; hair on the nape forming a short mane reversed in the direction of the growth, the parting close to the withers. Throat furnished with a flap of loose skin, or dewlap, which bears a beardlike tuft of hairs.
Tail reaching to the hocks, covered with short hair, but tufted at the tip.
Female. Like the male, but slighter in build; without the thick frontal mat of hair; horns longer, thinner, less strongly crested, and usually much less twisted. Mammæ 4.
Range of the Genus. Africa south of the Sahara, from Senegambia and the White Nile in the north to Cape Colony in the south.