The subspecies T. o. gigas is based on a pair of horns obtained by Heuglin on the White Nile, and distinguished by their large size, great length (35 inches), and strong corrugations. From Schweinfurth’s observations we learn that this form carries well-marked body-stripes throughout life, sometimes 15 in number. In these two respects it would seem to approach Taurotragus derbianus, but Schweinfurth says nothing about the black neck of the last species.
Hab. South Africa, from the Cape Colony (where it is now extinct) to Angola on the west and to the Transvaal and Mozambique on the east, and thence up to the Zambesi; at its northern limits passing into the striped form (T. o. livingstonii), which extends throughout Eastern Africa up to and rather beyond Mount Kenia; also found on the White Nile and in the adjacent districts (T. o. gigas).
At the close of the long series of Antelopes we arrive at the largest and finest form of the whole group, and one, moreover, that might well become of great economical importance to mankind, if proper measures were taken for its acclimatization.
The “Eland,” as it is now universally called, was well known to the early settlers of the Cape, where it received its name from some fancied resemblance to the Elk (Alces machlis), which is the “Eland” of the Hollanders and the “Elenn” or “Elendthier” of the Germans. It must have been size, we suppose, more than any other point of similarity, that induced the Dutchmen to apply such an unsuitable name to this animal.
The old traveller Peter Kolben, about 1719, gave the first recognizable, though rather misleading, account of the Eland, which at that epoch was still found in the mountains near Capetown. In 1764 Buffon, in the twelfth volume of his ‘Histoire Naturelle,’ called it “Le Coudous,” or, at any rate, gave unmistakable figures of its horns under that name, which, we suppose, he had by some error transposed to it from the Kudu (Strepsiceros capensis). It was mainly upon Kolben’s Alces capensis and Buffon’s “Coudous” that Pallas, in his first essay on the genus Antilope (1776), based his Antilope oryx, alleging that it “seemed to be” the Antilope oryx of ancient authors! At the same time he states that he had examined a complete skeleton of this animal in the Museum of Prince William of Holland. Very unfortunately, in his second and amended list of the Antelopes, Pallas proposed to make a change in his former names by transferring the term “oryx” to another animal (the Antilope bezoartica of his first memoir) and assigning the new name “oreas” to the Eland. This change, however, we may say, has been generally acquiesced in, and the name oreas has been almost universally applied to the Eland, either specifically or generically, until modern days, when the zealous searchers after priority have resuscitated Pallas’s long-forgotten term “oryx.” This, indeed, seems certainly to be the earliest specific name applicable to the present animal and should, in strict justice, be adopted.
As regards its generic name the Eland has been equally unfortunate. Desmarest, in 1822, first proposed to use “Oreas” as a subgeneric term for this form; and Gray, in 1850, employed it as a genus, combining it with the specific term “canna,” so that the name of the Eland became Oreas canna. As will be seen by our list of synonyms, this name was generally adopted, and has been in constant use for the present species for the last twenty years. We have, however, shown that “oreas,” as a specific term, must give place to “oryx”; and in like manner “Oreas” cannot stand as a generic term for the present animal, because it has been previously employed in zoology as a genus of Lepidoptera (1806) and as a genus of Mollusca (1808), both of which antedate Desmarest’s use of it in 1822. Under these circumstances it is necessary to adopt the next given name, Taurotragus of Wagner, and the correct scientific name of the Eland, according to modern usage, will be Taurotragus oryx.
Having now stated at full length our reasons for the unwelcome but necessary change of name of this Antelope, we will resume our comments on its literary history.
In the Supplement to his ‘Histoire Naturelle,’ published in 1782, Buffon was able to give an improved account of the Eland. This was mostly copied from Allamand’s article inserted in Schneider’s edition of the ‘Histoire Naturelle,’ issued at Amsterdam in the previous year, and was accompanied by a perfectly recognizable figure of the whole animal under the name of “Le Canna,” adopted from its supposed Hottentot appellation. Shortly afterwards (1783) Vosmaer, in a number of his ‘Regnum Animale,’ published a full description and coloured figure of the Eland from a specimen then living in the Menagerie of the Prince of Orange in Holland, probably the same as that from which Allamand had taken his information. Sparrman, who visited the Cape about this period, also gave a good account of the structure and habits of this Antelope, as observed by him in the Alexandria and Somerset-East Divisions of the Colony. Paterson, in 1790, recorded having met with Elands in Caledon, as also in the Van-Ryndorp and Uitenhage Divisions a few years previously. Thunberg, another well-known traveller and naturalist (1795), found the Eland in Uniondale, and Lichtenstein in Calvinia, Aberdeen, and Middelburg (1803–4). Our countryman Burchell, as recorded in his ‘Travels,’ came across Elands in 1822, in Prieska, Herbert, and Britstown, and found them numerous in Hanover.
We may now pass on to the days of Harris, whose celebrated hunting-expedition into the interior took place in 1836 and 1837. Even at that date the Eland was pronounced to be extinct in the Cape Colony, but was met with in abundance on the banks of the Vaal River, where Harris feasted himself and his followers on its succulent meat.
By all classes in Africa, Harris writes, the flesh of the Eland is deservedly esteemed over that of any other animal: