FEMALE GORAL.
The goral is a Himalayan antelope, with somewhat the habits of a chamois.
Photo by W. P. Dando] [Regent's Park.
HARNESSED ANTELOPE.
A very beautiful species, in which the ground-colour of the coat is a rich chestnut, while the spots and stripes are pure white.
The Greater Kudu is one of the most magnificent-looking of the whole family of antelopes, and is an animal of large size, an adult male standing 4 feet 9 inches and upwards at the withers. The general colour of this species is light brown to dark grey, the old males looking much darker than females or younger animals, because the scantiness of their coats shows the dark colour of the skin beneath. On each side of the body and hind-quarters there are several white stripes, which vary in number from four to eight or nine. As in all this group of antelopes, there are two or three cheek-spots, as well as an arrow-shaped white mark across the nose, below the eyes. In the male there is a slight mane on the back of the neck, and a fringe of long white and blackish-brown hair intermixed, extending from the throat to the chest. The ears are very large and rounded, and the male is adorned with magnificent spiral horns, which have been known to attain a length of 48 inches in a straight line from base to tip, and 64 inches over the curve.
The greater kudu once had a very wide range, which extended from the central portions of the Cape Colony to Angola on the west, and on the east throughout East Africa up to Abyssinia; but, with the single exception of the buffalo, no species of wild animal suffered more from the terrible scourge of rinderpest which recently swept over the continent than this lordly antelope, and it has almost ceased to exist in many districts of South and South Central Africa, where up to 1896 it was still very numerous.
Photo by Percy Ashenden] [Cape Town.