BUFFALOES 405 



brindled wildebeest, which is without doubt a near relative 

 of the group. 



The subfamily ranges through temperate North America; 

 Europe, from Great Britain, within historic times, eastward 

 to Asia and the Malay Islands, and Africa south of the 

 Sahara. Members of the group have been found only as 

 far back as the Pliocene, but were at that time quite as 

 widely distributed as at present. Notwithstanding the ab- 

 sence of the BovincB in the older Tertiary geologic forma- 

 tions, they are not a modern group but rather one whose 

 ancestral forms are still unknown. 



African Buffaloes 



Syncerus 



Syncerus Hodgson, 1847, Journ. Asiatic Soc, Bengal, XVI, new series No. 

 7, p. 709; type fixed by Hollister, 191 1, Bos brachyceros, the Lake Chad buffalo. 



A considerable number of distinct generic names are 

 to-day employed for the African buffalo by various writers. 

 Some of the names used do not apply, while others are too 

 comprehensive to be applicable to our present conception 

 of genera. The old Linnaean genus Bos is of the latter 

 category. It is often used in a broad sense by writers for 

 all of the Bovincs, but should be limited as a generic term 

 to the ox and its close allies. Bubalus, another name fre- 

 quently used in a generic sense for the African buffalo, is 

 properly applicable to the Indian buffalo, as the latter shows 

 differences in the skull and shape of the horns from the 

 African which are of generic weight. The name is also 

 objectionable on account of its close similarity to Bubalis, 

 the generic designation of the hartebeests. Those who 

 consider the African buffalo a distinct generic type from 

 the ox and the Indian buffalo must employ the term Syn- 

 cerus, of Hodgson, who proposed it in 1847 for the African 

 buffalo inhabiting the Lake Chad or Bornu district. The 

 generic character of greatest weight in this genus is the 

 lack of attachment of the vomer to the palatine bones. 



