AFRICAN BUFFALO 67 



relatively shorter, with less black on the front of the tips of the latter ; 

 the mane is longer and inclined to be pendent ; and the white round 

 the eye and on the muzzle is less pure and less sharply defined from 

 the fawn, while there is no white on the under side of the lower jaw 

 and the angle of the throat. 



Sir Samuel Baker gives the following graphic account of the wild 

 ass in the neighbourhood of the Atbara river : " Those who have 

 seen donkeys in their civilised state can have no conception of the 

 beauty of the wild and original animal. ... In its native desert it is 

 the perfection of activity and courage ; there is a high-bred tone in 

 the deportment, a high-actioned gait, when it trots freely over the 

 rocks and sand with the speed of the horse. When it gallops ov^er 

 the boundless desert, no animal is more difficult to approach ; and 

 although they are frequently captured by the Arabs, those taken are 

 invariably the foals, which are ridden down by fast dromedaries while 

 the mothers escape." 



THE AFRICAN BUFFALO 



i^Bos \^Biibalus\ caffer) 



Buffel, Cape Dutch ; Inyati, Matabili and Zulu ; 

 Nari, Bechuana AND Basuto 



(Plate iii, figs. 1-3) 



With the African buffalo, which is a species displaying extreme 

 local variation both in the matter of size and colour, as well as in the 

 form of the horns, we come to the first representative of the suborder 

 Artiodactyla, or those hoofed animals in which the pair of toes corre- 

 sponding to the third and fourth fingers and toes of the human hand 

 and foot are symmetrical to a vertical line drawn between them. The 

 highest development of this type of foot-structure is presented by the 

 "cloven hoof" of the ruminants; but the feet of the pig and the 

 hippopotamus are constructed on the same general plan. In the 

 giraffe and the okapi, as well as in a few antelopes, like the pala, only 

 the large middle pair of hoofs remains ; but more generally, as in all 

 the members of the ox group, there is also a pair of small lateral hoofs 

 to each foot. Many striking peculiarities are associated with this 

 characteristic type of foot-structure, but it will suffice to mention in 

 this place that when appendages are present on the head, these take 



