Liberia * 



coloration on the limbs is further set off by the black of their 

 outer surface. The thin short mane along the neck and back 

 varies from black to white. The broad, boldly twisted horns 

 are white at the tip. This handsome tragelaph is found 

 throughout the forest region of Liberia, from the Sierra Leone 

 frontier to the Cavalla River. It is usually miscalled the "elk" 

 by the Americo-Liberians ; by the Vai it is known as gen^ 

 and by the Kru peoples as bodebe. I have seen a pair of 

 its horns obtained from a place within twenty-two miles 

 of Monrovia. 



Bovines are represented in Liberia by perhaps two species 

 or varieties of buffalo namely, the red buffalo of the Congo 

 (Bubalus nanus} and the Senegalese or Lake Chad type of the 

 smaller African buffalo (Bubalus planiceros). The last-named 

 has blackish brown hair, and horns which are intermediate 

 in type between the much-reduced horns of the Congo buffalo 

 and the long out-spreading horns of the South and East 

 African type. French explorers of Eastern and Northern 

 Liberia assert that the red buffalo with the short horns is 

 found in the forest region, and that where the forest gives 

 way to the open country on the Mandingo Plateau its place 

 is taken by what might be termed the Senegalese type, character- 

 istic of the Gambia, upper and central Niger regions. This last 

 I am able to illustrate by photographs of the living specimen 

 from West Africa in the London Zoological Gardens. The 

 illustration of the horns of the smaller red-haired type is re- 

 produced from an example illustrated by H. S. Pel, the Dutch 

 official and naturalist, who described (about 1850) a skull of this 

 buffalo from the (.old Coast. It exactly resembles specimens 

 which I have myself seen in the possession of Europeans and 

 natives in the Liberian coast-lands. 



Buttikofer obtained specimens of this red buffalo from the 



730 



