Miscellaneous, 259 



pumilus, thus making it the type of their species. The forehead and 

 horns of a young ox were in the Museum of the Royal Society. 

 Pennant thought that they belonged to his dwarf biiifalo, but in hia 

 second edition said that he wow found that they belonged to the 

 Cape ox. Turton, in his account of Bos pumilus, made no reference 

 to these horns, which !Sir Victor Brooke says (but I do not think 

 he has proved it) are the horns of a young Bos hrachijceros of Western 

 Africa, and proposes to change the name of this ox to Bos pumilus 

 of Turton, established ou an animal from Morocco, and not, as Sir 

 Victor Brooke asserts in his paper, on the forehead and horns in the 

 Museum of the lloyal Society, the existence of which Turton does 

 not notice. The animal from Morocco he named B. pumilus is 

 supposed to be a young or dwarf variety of the common buffalo, and 

 is certainly not the West-African bush-ox {Bos brachijceros). 



K Sir Victor Brooke cannot see the mistake he has made, I have 

 done my best to enable him to do so ; and it is this non-appreciation 

 of such questions that renders his prolix synonymy in various 

 cases useless and misleadino:. 



On Felis colocolo, Hamilton Smith, F. Cuvier, and Geoffroy. 

 By Dr. J. E. Gkay, F.R.S. &c. 



Major Hamilton Smith made a figure of an animal " said to have 

 been shot iu the interior of Guiana by an officer of Lewenstein's 

 Eiflemen, and by him stuffed and sent to England, but which probably 

 never reached its destination." It is represented as a white cat, with 

 various-sized longitudinal brown dashes on its neck and body, with 

 slate-coloured legs and feet, and a slender black tail with numerous 

 white rings. 



Of this drawing an account was published in Griffith's ' Animal 

 Kingdom,' in Geoffroy and Cuvier's ' Histoire XatureUe des Mammi- 

 feres ' (where the animal is said to come from Surinam), and in 

 Jardine's ' Naturalist's Library,' iii. p. 25G, pi. xxvi., where the legs 

 are erroneously left pale-coloured, though said to be blackish in the 

 description. 



I have never seen this cat, and I am not aware of its ever having 

 been seen or of its being in any museum in Europe, It certainly 

 is not the Felis colocolo of MoHna, from Chili, figured by Philippi, 

 Wiegmann's ' Archiv,' 1870, p. 41, t. i. fig. 7, and t. iii. figs. I &.'2. 



My late friend and teacher. Colonel Hamilton Smith, drew animals 

 most beautifully and \\'ith great facility, and made a very large col- 

 lection of sketches and drawings of them and of antiquities and 

 costumes, which he collected from museums that he visited, and 

 books, and even fragments of skins. Unfortunately, instead of 

 drawing the specimen or the figure of the animal which he examined 

 as it was, he had the habit of improving its attitude, and even 

 of making a beautiful drawing from a bad specimen, or from a 

 fragment of a skin, or from a rough sketch, or from a woodcut or 

 other figun; wliich lie f<jund in some old book ; and ho very often 

 did not mark his drawings whence or how they were obtained ; so 



