“I myself, one day in May 1899, saw a large herd of very large Antelopes in the distance near the town of Berreef on the north bank of the Gambia, about 15 miles from Yarbutenda. I have little doubt that these were Derbian Elands, though I was not fortunate enough to secure one. They were of an extremely light colour all over the body, but the head and neck were darker, and the horns appeared rather short and straight at the distance of 400 yards.”
Fig. 121.
Front view of the horns of the Derbian Eland.
Before concluding our account of the Derbian Eland, it is necessary to say a few words respecting the supposed new species of Eland described by M. Rochebrune in the ‘Bulletin’ of the Société Philomathique of Paris in 1883, and subsequently in his ‘Fauna of Senegambia,’ although we are not generally willing even to allude to this most untrustworthy publication. So far as we can make out, the specimens of this animal promised in the text of M. Rochebrune’s work to be sent to the Gallery of the Museum of Paris have never reached that Institution, and the only evidence we have, therefore, for its existence is contained in M. Rochebrune’s descriptions and figures. As well as we can judge from these and from the extreme improbability of there being a species of Eland in Senegal different from that of the Gambia, we are inclined to place the so-called Oreas colini as a synonym of the present species. The figure of the head given by Rochebrune is stated to have been taken from a sketch made by “M. le Dr. Colin” of a head of this animal obtained in the forest of Kita in Senegal. In this figure the whole head of the animal is represented as of a nearly uniform slaty grey, with the exception of a patch of reddish hair on the forehead at the base of the horns and a black patch in the middle of the nose. These are certainly striking differences, if we could trust them as being accurate, but we do not know how far M. le Dr. Colin’s sketch was correctly made, nor what alterations the copier of it may have introduced into M. Rochebrune’s plate. We cannot admit the existence of the supposed new species upon such unsatisfactory evidence.
The authorities of the Liverpool Museum have most kindly sent up to us for examination the specimens of the Derbian Eland now in the Derby Museum, Liverpool, which are probably those from which the original figures in the ‘Gleanings’ were drawn by Waterhouse Hawkins. The frontlet is apparently that of an adult specimen, as will be seen from our view of it (fig. 121, p. 221) prepared by Mr. Grönvold. The horns measure 30½ inches in length from base to tip, the tips are nearly 23 inches apart in a straight line. The two flat skins which accompany it are without heads, and the legs have been cut off at the knees.
In the British Museum there are frontlets of one female and two male specimens of the Derbian Eland, obtained at the Gambia by the same collector (Whitfield) and presented by Lord Derby. In the same collection there is a flat skin brought home by Winwood Reade, and the head of a female, dried with the skin on, obtained by Dr. Percy Kendall on the Gambia.
The material available not being, in our opinion, sufficient for the preparation of a correct figure of the Derbian Eland, we have thought it best, as our illustration of this Antelope, to copy, on a reduced scale (Plate C.), the original figures of the Derbian Eland drawn by Waterhouse Hawkins for plate XXV. of the ‘Gleanings.’
We admit, however, that these are by no means satisfactory, for the head and legs of the specimens from which the figures were taken are absent, and the details as to these parts in the figures were probably filled up from conjecture. Wolf’s figure of the head of Reade’s specimen in the ‘Proceedings’ is, no doubt, more accurate, but in this example the legs are likewise deficient.
April, 1900.