ORIGIN OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS 



223 



Asia. Africa also possesses several distinct species of true 

 buffalo, notably the cape buffalo of the south, — with horns much 

 like those of the musk ox, — the Sierra Leone buffalo, and the 

 small red or short-horned species of the western coast region. 



In extinct forms of large size Africa is peculiarly rich. If 

 accounts may be believed, the horn cores of one specimen from 

 Algeria measured no less than eleven feet and another from the 

 cape fourteen feet. As they would be considerably larger when 

 covered with their horny sheath, the spread of the horns and 

 the size of these animals must have been truly prodigious. 



Fig. 42. Sir Donald, head of the largest herd of bisons in America 

 Canadian National Park, Banff, Alberta 



It will be seen, therefore, that the domesticated cattle of both 

 Asia and Africa have no lack of wild relatives both living and 

 extinct, and the fact of their ultimate origin in the wild must be 

 clear to the most casual student, — so clear that if the domes- 

 ticated races should suddenly become extinct, they, or equally 

 good successors, could be readily restored from the wild. 



However this may be in the western continent, all closely 

 related species were extinct in America, if, indeed, they ever 

 existed, long before its discovery by the white man. The bison 

 (Bos americanus), popularly but erroneously called the buffalo, 

 a close relative of the European bison (Bos bonassus), was the 



