368 RIFLE AND ROMANCE 



the subject of so many tales of ferocity and unprovoked 

 attack amid the close and impenetrable mazes of his 

 swampy retreats in the above-named parts of North- 

 Eastern India. Of this creature we find record of a 

 single horn in the British Museum measuring /8J inches. 

 If we allow one foot for the breadth of skull across the 

 forehead, this gives a total "sportsman's measurement" 

 from tip to tip of 169 inches, or over 14 feet ! 



Speiroceros, meaning curly-horned, is the variety in- 

 habiting the southern and eastern portions of the Central 

 Provinces and neighbouring wild tracts of country. 



Macroceros carries a head usually considerably longer 

 than his congener of more southerly habitat especially 

 in the case of the cows and his horns are generally 

 straighter ; while that of speiroceros has an appearance of 

 greater stoutness of build, and the horn is often set on at 

 a rather different angle. That the buffalo is essentially a 

 reed-haunting, jungle-boring old pachyderm it needs but 

 little perspicacity to discern. Those great plough-like 

 diverging horns, sweeping back in easy curve, were plainly 

 intended by Nature to divide the hampering tangle of his 

 jungly grassy home, as well as to assert his authority over 

 a ponderous and placid harem, and guard him from treach- 

 erous foes. Is it not therefore the decreasing necessity for 

 such use in the thinner jungles of the Central Provinces, 

 the increasing need for lighter armament on those more 

 open plains, that finds the buffalo of Lower India equipped 

 with horns different to those of his northern relative ? 



Then, again, the habits of the two varieties are dis- 

 similar. While those of the swamp-haunting Bubalus 

 easily suggest themselves, they are in no way an indica- 

 tion of the mode of life pursued by our more compact and 

 active friend of southern habitat. Speiroceros is a great 

 wanderer ; solitary bulls, or a bull or two in company 

 usually a big fellow, accompanied by a " fag," so to speak 

 making very long journeys under cover of darkness, and 



