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Show 416 MR. O. THOMAS ON THE ANTELOPES [May 17, 1. CEPHALOLOPHUS SYLVICULTOR, Afz. Antilope sylvicultrix, Afz. N. Act. Ups. vii. p. 265 (1811). Cephalophus longiceps, Gray, P. Z. S. 1865, p. 204 (woodcut of skull). Cephalophus melanoprymnus, Gray, P. Z. S. 1871, p. 594 (woodcut of skull), pi. xliv. (animal). Juv. Size large; form stout and heavy. Ears short, broad and rounded, their length much less than the distance from eye to muzzle. Fur very short on the fore-quarters, longer on the hind back, but in adults worn off and showing the whitish underfur or naked skin round the base of the tail. General colour all over, of face, body above and below, and of limbs, dark blackish brown. Muzzle, cheeks and chin, and extreme tips of ears whitish. Lumbar region with a broad pale yellowish mesial stripe running from the middle of the back on to the loins. In extreme youth the hairs of the posterior half of the body are all tipped with white, except just along what is afterwards the pale lumbar stripe, where they have long blackish tips, entirely hiding thewhiite; and the caudal region, afterwards whitish and partly naked, is clothed with long black hairs. (See Gray's figure and description of " C. melanoprymnus") Horns long and tapering, lying back in or below the hue of the nasal profile, but rather bowed downwards terminally. Divergent, slender, evenly tapering, but little roughened at base :- c? and § almost precisely alike, except that the latter are slightly smaller. Length ( cS ) 163 mm.; basal diameter going about 5 or 5| times in the length. Skull, in proportion to the size of the animal, delicate, slender, and elongate. Muzzle slender, tapering, not laterally swollen between the premolars and the anteorbital fossa. Anteorbital fossae of medium depth, their bottoms from 22 to 24 m m . apart \ Mesial notch of palate surpassing anteriorly the lateral ones by some 10 or 12 mm., these latter comparatively deep and V-shaped. Bullae without any secondary inflation behind the point where the stylohyal articulates. Dimensions.- $ . Height at shoulder 880 ; ear 105 ; hind foot 345. Skull (d)-basal length 262; greatest breadth 125; anterior rim of orbit to gnathion 166; nasals, length 123, breadth 46; muzzle2 99; length of upper molar series 89. Hab. West Africa. Sierra Leone (Afzelius) [Whitfield (Brit. Mus.)] ; Liberia [Schweitzer (Berl. Mus.)] ; Fan tee [Aubinn (Brit. Mus.)]; Lagos [Moloney (Brit. Mus.)]; Gaboon [Du Chaillu (Brit. Mus.)]. This, the largest species of the genus, is remarkable for the great change of colour which takes place as the young grows up, a change which, although brought about by very simple means, is so great as 1 Measured with calipers across the muzzle. - Front of the anterior premolar to gnathion. |
