Miscellaneous. 499 



Bos brachyceros, the West-African Buffalo, and the Dwarf Buffalo 

 of Pennant. By Dr. J. E. Gray, F.R.S. &c. 



Sir Victor Brooke, in the P. Z. S. 1873, p. 474, has given a very 

 good account, illustrated with some admirable figures, of the head 

 and skulls of a species of buffalo, Bos brachyceros, and has changed the 

 name to that of Bos pwmilus because he thinks it is the dwarf animal 

 described by Belon as coming from Morocco. Should it prove to be 

 the Morocco animal, which I greatly doubt, I wonder it has not oc- 

 curred to Sir V. Brooke that B. pwmilus is a very inappropriate name 

 for a buffalo as large or larger than the Cape buffalo ; and I may observe 

 that his synonyma, compiled with such appearance of care, are really 

 very untrustworthy, as I have found them on several other occasions. 

 Belon, in his ' Voyage,' pp. 119 & 120, mentions and very roughly 

 figures an animal under the name of " un moult beau plus petit 

 bceuf d'Afrique," which he saw at Cairo, but which was said to have 

 been brought from Assaimie on the coast of Morocco. 



Linnaeus, in the 12th edition of the ' Systema Naturae,' vol. i. p. 99, 

 refers to this account, and considers it a variety of his Bos indicus, 

 quoting it under the name of Bubalus africanus, observing that he 

 believes it to be the same species as B. indicus. The account of the 

 animal gives no means of determining to what it belonged ; but it 

 may be, from its habitat, Bos dante or the African zebu. 



Pennant, in his ' Synopsis of Quadrupeds,' p. 9, founds a species, 

 under the name of the dwarf ox, entirely on Belon's description, 

 adding that he thinks a pair of horns in the Museum of the Royal 

 Society, noticed by Grew, belonged to this species. He also says 

 that perhaps the lant or dant described by Leo Africanus may 

 belong to this kind. In his next edition, called the ' History of 

 Quadrupeds,' p. 31, and in the 3rd edition, p. 36, he leaves out all 

 reference to these horns under the dwarf ox ; but in the 1st edition 

 of the ' History ' he repeats the plate that was in the ' Synopsis,' but 

 in the account of the plates he refers to the figure as that of the 

 young Cape buffalo; and in the 3rd edition he leaves out the 

 figures of these horns. In the text of both editions he refers to the 

 horns under the account of the Cape buffalo, saying that he believes 

 they belong to that species. 



Turton, in 'A General System of Nature,' published in 1806, 

 which is chiefly a translation of Gmelin, has a species which he 

 calls Bos pwmilus, from what seems to be Pennant's description of 

 the dwarf ox ; but he does not give any reference to that author, 

 whose name he uses, and he refers to the lant of Pennant as Bos 

 taurus, var. h, called the African ox. Bos pwmilus of Turton entirely 

 reposes on the dwarf ox of Pennant, which is founded on the "petit 

 bceuf" of Belon ; and this neither in the account of the animal, the 

 size, nor the habitat agrees with the "West-African Buffalo, which 

 has any thing but a shining coat or horns like Belon's figure. 



Grew, in his account of the " Rarities in the Museum of the Royal 

 Society," p. 26, mentions the horns of a wild bull called Bubalus 

 sive Buffalus, brought from Africa. 



Pennant, in his ' Synopsis of Quadrupeds,' p. 97, refers to and 



