CHAPTER VII 



THE AFRICAN OR CAPE BUFFALO 



The family of hollow-horned ruminants, including the 

 ox, the bison, the buffalo, and the musk ox, is to mankind 

 perhaps the most important of all animal groups. For what 

 would the civilized American or European, or the naked 

 savages of Africa, or the hundreds of millions of Hindoos, 

 Chinese and Japanese do without the work of the ox and 

 the milk of the cow? Of the existing wild animals of this 

 family, the American bison, now practically extinct as a 

 wild animal, the Indian, and the African, or Cape buffalo 

 are the most important. Of these species again the Cape 

 buffalo is the largest and by far the " gamiest." 



The buffaloes are so far distinct from other wild cattle 

 that they will not interbreed with them. Among the buf- 

 faloes themselves, even in the one continent of Africa, quite 

 a difference exists both in size and color. The Congo 

 buffalo with shorter and more upturned horns is much 

 smaller than the Cape buffalo, and of an almost yellow tint. 

 The Abyssinian buffalo is brown and also somewhat 

 smaller than the Cape buffalo, as are also the Senegambian 

 and the " gray buffalo," supposed to exist in the regions 

 around Lake Tchad. 



The Cape buffalo inhabits to-day all the central and 

 eastern parts of Africa, from the Cape in the south to 



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