BOVINE 51 



Buffelus cafifer, Matschic, Sdugeth. Deutsch. — Ost.-AfriJca, p. 107, 1895. 



Syncerns caffer, HoUistcr, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, vol. xxiv, 

 p. 192, 1911. 



African Buffalo. 



Typical locality Sunday Eiver, Algoa Bay, South Africa. 



Horns relatively shorter, less markedly triangular in 

 section, less rugose, and typically more expanded and 

 much more closely approximated at the base than in 

 B. huhalis. Size and colour variable, the latter ranging 

 from black to reddish or orange dun. Hair of middle 

 line of back normally directed uniformly backwards. 

 Ears large and heavily fringed with long hairs. Skull 

 massive, relatively short and broad, with the facial 

 profile markedly convex, the muzzle proportionately short 

 and wide, the nasals also short and broad, with their greatest 

 length in the middle line of the skull. Vomer free from 

 palatines. Auditory, or tympanic, bulla large, projecting 

 much beyond plane of inferior aspect of basioccipital. 



The distributional area includes all such parts of 

 Ethiopian Africa as are suited to the habits of these animals. 



All the forms of African buffaloes appear to the writer to 

 be local races of a single species, many of them probably 

 intergrading. Whether all the forms to which separate 

 names have been given — mostly on tlie evidence of the skull 

 and horns — are really entitled to even racial distinction, the 

 material in the Museum is insufficient to afford means of 

 arriving at a definite conclusion. The extent to which 

 buffalo-horns became worn down in old age is so great that, 

 without a large series of specimens from the same localities 

 for comparison, two races might easily be made from young 

 and old individuals of one and the same form. 



Although Dr. Matschie has attempted to make a "key"' 

 to the various races, from the evidence of the horns alone, 

 it is really impossible at present to do this satisfactorily ; 

 but the races may be divided into two main groups from the 

 characters of the horns. 



GEOUP I. 



Horns bent sharply backwards a short distance from 

 their bases, so that they do not lie in the same plane for any 



E 2 



