ConCTo Buffalo 1 1 1 



Of four skulls obtained trom the Congo by M. Dybowski and pre- 

 served in the Paris Museum, two are those of males and two of females. 

 The horns ot the adult bull are strongly convergent, and much resemble the 

 type pair, but those of the second and younger bull are not distinctly 

 convergent at the tips. The horns of one of the female skulls are of 

 nearly similar curvature to those ot the adult male, but much thinner, 

 and nearly cylindrical, while those ot the second are more expanded and 

 flattened. 



Specimens are urgently needed betore the variations according to age, 

 sex, and locality ot the horns of this race can be fully worked out ; but it 

 appears to be the case that horns precisely comparable to those of the type 

 specimen are to be met with only in the Congo and perhaps Lower Guinea, 

 and that as we advance towards Sierra Leone these appendages apparently 

 tend to become more divergent, and consequently more like those of the 

 Senegambian race. Hence it may be inferred that the type specimen was 

 in all probability obtained somewhere between the Congo and the mouth 

 of the Niger. 



The leading characteristics of the race are to be found in the general 

 yellow coloration, the yellow inner surface of the ear, save for a black 

 patch on the lower margin, and the black muzzle, mane, tail-tutt, and legs. 

 Taken by itselt, there would be no question that the Congo buftalo should 

 be regarded as specitically distinct from its gigantic black relative of the 

 Cape; but it appears in the northern part of its range to pass imperceptibly 

 into the larger variety phiiiiccros, which again is closely allied to the still 

 larger (vqii'nioctialis ; while the latter in turn in P^ast Central Atrica not 

 improbably passes into the typical Cape torm. 



It has been remarked that blackness in animals is very generally associ- 

 ated with hot damp climates ; but it is evident that the Congo buiFalo 

 forms an exception in this respect, the allied race inhabiting the open 

 plains of the Cape being black, while redness is characteristic of the 



