In British East Africa this Antelope, according to Mr. F. J. Jackson, is also common everywhere on the coast, and is to be met with as far west as the edge of the Mau Plateau, where, as he informs us (P. Z. S. 1897, p. 456), it is plentiful.
Fig. 101.
Frontlet of Cumming’s Bushbuck.
(Brit. Mus.)
Further north in Somaliland the Bushbuck, although not met with anywhere on the high plateau, was found in the dense forests of the Webbe by Capt. Swayne during his second expedition in 1893. It is described by him as the most wary and difficult to shoot of all the game-animals he has ever encountered. It is often caught by the natives on the Webbe in staked pits, excavated in the jungles on the banks of the river.
Capt. Swayne has referred the Bushbuck of the Webbe to T. decula, but this is certainly not correct, as, according to his own description, it has “four or five white stripes, and sometimes as many as thirty white spots.” In some skins from Sen Morettu, on the Webbe, received from Capt. Swayne, now in the British Museum, there are four or five distinct white stripes on the flanks, both in adult and immature males, a few white spots on the hind-quarters, and a row of white spots extending along each side of the body above the belly. Although in some respects this form comes nearer to T. scriptus, we think it better for the present to regard it as a subspecific form of T. roualeyni, which, using Mr. Pocock’s subspecific term, we call T. roualeyni fasciatus, and describe as follows:—
Height at withers about 26 inches. Head and legs of the same colour and pattern as in T. roualeyni and the other species of this section of the genus. General colour a reddish yellow, brighter on the hind-quarters, and distinctly blacker in the dorsal region, where the hair assumes a dusky greyish-brown hue. Body marked with four or five very distinct, mostly broad, white stripes, a row of white spots running along above the belly and a few white spots on the haunches. Hair on body shorter than in T. roualeyni. No distinct collar of short hair round the base of the neck, as in T. roualeyni, T. sylvaticus, and T. scriptus, the entire neck being covered with a coating of short silky hairs of the same length as those of the head, much shorter than those of the body, and of a dusky, greyish-brown colour.
Young male redder in colour than the adult and equally strongly marked with white.
The skull of a subadult male gives the following measurements:—Basal length 8·25 inches, orbit to muzzle 4·6, greatest width 3·75.