Mr. !•]. Hlytli on the supposititious " Bos (?) pegasus." 20") 



always straight. WIumi tliey sec Iiumaii ln-ings they do not 

 Hoe, but stand and look on.' Lopi's describes them as sonic- 

 tliing h'ss than an ox, but simihir in head and neek. I)aj)per re- 

 ports them to be butlaloes, ot"a redtUsli colour, with long horns." 



Ot" all names, the appellation ^^ butlalo " is about the most 

 vaguely ajiplied by unscientific writers. In general, as in 

 North America, it refers to any second animal of the bovine 

 groui) which is not the ordinary ox of the locality. When 

 English graziers talk of '' buffaloes," they are sure to mean 

 the humped taurine cattle ; and the latter arc referred to by 

 that name in Low's ' Domestic (,)iiadrupeds of the British 

 Islands,' as being kept in certain English parks. The real 

 buffaloes have come to be denominated " water-buffaloes ; " 

 but in South Africa there is a genuine buffalo {liuhahis crrffcr), 

 which, as the single bovine species there inhabiting which is 

 additional to the domestic ox, has chanced to be rightly so 

 designated. Capt. Lyon, K.N., in his ' Travels in North 

 Africa,' describes what he styles three species of " buffalo," 

 which ])rove to be the Barbary Aoudad {Ocis Iervia),t\\e large 

 North-African Bubalis {Alcelaphus major j from its alleged 

 size), and the Barbary Leucoryx ( Oryx leucoryx). AVherefore 

 it follows that no definite idea can be attached to the name 

 " buffalo " when employed by Avriters who are not carefully 

 discriminative zoologists. 



Next, Lopes describes the animal to which he refers as being 

 " something less than an ox." Wc have heard of a wit- 

 ness in an English court of justice describing a particiilar stone, 

 respecting the magnitude of which he was requested to give 

 his testimony, as being " of the size of a piece of chalk ! " 

 Hardly less vague is the allusion of a traveller in intertropical 

 Africa to the stature of an ox, inasmuch as there are races of 

 taurine cattle in that part of the world which arc of all sizes, 

 from the very largest to the very smallest. The Pacasses of 

 Congo, noticed by Fathers Gallini and Carli, " with ears half 

 a yard in length," I should have felt inclined to refer to a 

 species of llippotragus formerly in the Knowsley menagerie 

 (a young animal, of which I have seen an unpublished co- 

 loured drawing), only that it is stated that their horns are 

 " always straight." By no means improbably a straight- 

 horned species of Hipprotragus (?), except that their " roaring 

 like lions " is somewhat anomalous for a member of the Oryx 

 group (to which WitHijipotragi axe. unquestionably subordinate, 

 or vice versa). The Hippotragiy it may be remarked, repre- 

 sent the horses, as the Oryges do the zebras and asses, among 

 the grand antilopine series ! The tendency to inordinate de- 

 velopment of the ear-conch is remarkable in sundry West- 



