AFRICAN BUFFALO 



75 



together indiscriminately from every part of South Africa where 

 these animals were once found, either Dr. Matschie or any one else 

 could tell from what district each came. I have seen thousands upon 

 thousands of Cape buffaloes, and examined hundreds of pairs of horns 

 — bulls and cows — from such widely separated parts of the country as 

 Cape Colony, the neighbourhood of the Pungwi river, and the Chobi, 

 not to mention many intermediate areas, and nothing struck me more 

 than the great individual differences between horns, not only in every 

 such district, but in every herd in the same district. 



" In distinguishing one race of buffalo from another, Dr. Matschie 



Fig. 26. — Horns of the Senec-ambian Buffalo. 



seems to rely a great deal on the comparative length of the ' smooth 

 tips of the horns.' But surely this is a matter of age. Buffalo bulls 

 in their prime, when they are always found with the herds of cows, 

 have the smooth tips of their horns very long and usually growing in 

 a beautiful curve ; but as they grow older they gradually wear off the 

 points of their horns, so that the horns of really old bulls are always 

 very different in appearance from those of younger animals, which, 

 although they may have obtained the full horn-growth over the fore- 

 head, have not yet commenced to wear the points down. 



"Both the two buffalo -heads referred to in the above resume of 

 Dr. Matschie's paper — the one shot by Mr. J. G. Millais on the 

 Nuanetsi river, and the other the one figured on page 72, and now 



