206 Mr. E. Blyth on the supposititious " Bos (?) pegasus." 



African ruminants; and they are extraordinarily long in certain 

 African Leporidae, and large in the diminutive Fennecs. Vide 

 the ears of Bubalus hrachyceros^ represented in the ' Pro- 

 ceedings ' of the Zoological Society for 1863, p. 158. Here 

 we have the broad (or forest) form of ear-conch, as likewise 

 in B. caffer ; whereas in the Asiatic buffaloes the ear-conch is 

 narrow or lanceolate (denoting a more open and covertless 

 abode). Again, we perceive the lanceolate shape of ear-conch 

 in the humped or desert form of taurine cattle, whereas other 

 cattle of naturally forest haunts have the broad form of 

 ear-conch ; and the same recurs in the great Derbian eland 

 {Oreas derhianus)^ which is known to be a forest species, as 

 contrasted with the common eland, which is a desert species. 

 The shape of the ear-conch, therefore, is of no small value, as 

 being indicative of the habits, not of ruminants only, but of 

 various other species of the class Mammalia. Dapper's " buf- 

 faloes of a reddish colour with long horns " may be no other 

 than the large Senegal race of Oryx leucoryx figm-ed by F. 

 Cuvier, and exemplified by specimens now living at Antwerp, 

 should the habitat also prove suitable. Here it may be re- 

 marked that a third and remarkably small race of 0. leucoryx 

 is represented by a skull in the British Museum. Col. C. H. 

 Smith continues : — 



" These testimonies are very vague, but still indicate one 

 and the same animal "(?) "partially misrepresented. To 

 these accounts might be added the notice of Capt. Lyon re- 

 specting the Wadan^ ' a fierce buffalo ' " (!), " ' the size of an 

 ass, having large tufts of hair on the shoulders, and very large 

 heavy horns' (the Libyan Aoudad). This Arabic name 

 seems derived from loaad, braying or bellowing like a young 

 camel, and may coincide with Carli's account of the roar of 

 Pacasse, and the tufted hair on the shoulders be no inapt re- 

 presentation of Pliny's pretended wings of his Pegasus " (right 

 enough, only that the lateral tufts of long hair in the Aoudad 

 grow from the fore limbs, above the mid joint) ; " but no 

 place would have been deservedly given to it in this work, if 

 in the collection of drawings formerly the property of Prince 

 Maurice, of Nassau, now in the Berlin library, there was not 

 among the number of zoological subjects of Brazil several of 

 Angola, such as sheep "(!) " and an African elephant, which 

 latter cannot have been executed from a specimen in America. 

 The sheep also have their Congo and Angola names ; and it 

 may fairly be conjectured that the Prince, during his command 

 in Brazil, had an artist on the African coast, from whence, at 

 that time, slaves were beginning to be abundantly exported to 

 the Dutch settlements. Among these is a figure of a rumi- 



