Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/429

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ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS OF WESTERN EUROPE.
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elongation of the fore leg below the knee the front part of the animal seems to be supported on stilts. When standing still the Maned Wolf draws its head well up, and then presents a very striking appearance.

Ungulata.

Taurotragus oryx (Eland).—Ever since Lord Derby obtained his specimens of this fine Antelope for the Knowsley menagerie in 1842, Eland have been more or less familar even to untravelled people, and most zoological gardens have from time to time possessed a pair or more of them. The Striped or Livingstone's Eland is still to be obtained, but the rapidly increasing rarity of the old unstriped form of the Cape lends a melancholy interest to the contemplation of the few examples now in captivity. I remember spending some time, in the late summer of 1900, in studying the herd of Unstriped Eland then still surviving at the Jardin d'Acclimatation in Paris. It was not encouraging as regards the perpetuation of the race to observe that in the herd of five there were three animals whose bent or otherwise malformed horns indicated but too surely the need for the fresh blood so difficult to obtain. Unstriped Eland tend to darken with age, and bulls may become quite black along the spine. Young bulls sometimes grow horns having an antero-posterior curvature, plainly evident when seen from the side, the concavity of the curve being anterior. One young adult I saw recently in a continental collection had the horns somewhat unequal, and curiously bent outwards at the tips, as if indicating an approach to the open spiral horns of the Kudu, or the still more open spiral of the Addax.

Wild Eland are stated to smear their foreheads with their own urine. I recollect observing a fine bull of this species busily rubbing his frontal mat of hair upon a moist place in the paddock where he was confined, and energetically raking up the mud with his horns. Scarcely had he desisted than his offspring—a youngster only a few weeks old—came up, and imitated his example. Perhaps both were instinctively following some transmitted ancestral impulse, but, as both had been born in Europe, the reason for the act was not very obvious.

Addax nasomaculatus (Addax). (Plate II.)—This interesting