The Bongo Antelope.
(From Du Chaillu’s ‘Travels in Equatorial Africa,’ p. 306.)
The late Dr. J. E. Gray, who was not very friendly with the great explorer, and had carried on a paper warfare with him in the ‘Athenæum’ journal, lost no time in bringing the specimens before the Zoological Society, where he subjected them to a somewhat severe criticism. The supposed new species of Tragelaphus, he pointed out, was “evidently only a specimen of Antilope eurycerus of Ogilby.” This was, no doubt, correct, but at the same time Mr. Du Chaillu’s skin, imperfect as it was, was the first specimen of the animal, except the original two pairs of horns, acquired by the National Collection, where it is now to be seen mounted in the Gallery, and allows an idea to be formed of the brilliant colours of this splendid Antelope. It will be found figured by Sir Victor Brooke, from a sketch by Wolf (put upon the stone by Smit), in the Zoological Society’s ‘Proceedings’ for 1871. In the same article, is given a figure of the skull and horns of this Antelope, taken from one of the type specimens in the British Museum, which, by the kind permission of the Zoological Society, we are enabled to reproduce on the present occasion (fig. 104).
Fig. 104.
Head and horns of the Broad-horned Antelope.
(P. Z. S. 1871, p. 488.)
Besides Mr. Du Chaillu, the only travellers who have met with this beautiful Antelope in its native wilds appear to have been Messrs. Büttikofer and Stampfli, during their well-known researches in Liberia. From Dr. Jentink’s article upon the mammals collected during their explorations we learn that these naturalists obtained a complete specimen of an adult male of this species near Hill Town, besides two skins on the Junk River and the Mahfa River. In the second volume of his ‘Reisebilder aus Liberia’ Herr Büttikofer gives a figure of the Antelope in the text, and informs us that it lives in the forests and feeds principally upon leaves of trees, on which it browses up to a height of eight feet.
Besides the typical specimens of Ogilby’s Antilope eurycerus and Du Chaillu’s Tragelaphus albo-virgatus, which, as already mentioned, are now in the British Museum, the National Collection contains a good mounted head of an adult male of this Antelope from Fantee, which is accompanied by a flat body-skin, and the mounted skeleton of an adult male from Gaboon.
We are not aware that any living examples of the Broad-horned Antelope have ever reached Europe.