308 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 
In general the mammalian fauna may be said to be typically African, 
with almost no trace of Eurasian species. It is a continuation of that 
of the upper Nile, though rather more reduced, and in the region coy- 
ered, quite without any of the desert species found in the Saharan 
sands to the north and northwest. 
The list of species observed follows. 
SYNCERUS AEQUINOCTIALIS (Blyth). 
Nile Valley Buffalo. 
Bubalus caffer aequinoctialis Blyth, Proc. Zool. soc. London, 1866, p. 372. 
Bubalus azrakensis Matschie, Sitzb. Ges. naturf. freunde, Berlin, 1906, p. 169. 
In his review of the African buffaloes Matschie describes Bubalus 
azrakensis as a new species; it is based upon an imperfect skull from | 
Roseires on the Blue Nile. He says that it belongs to those forms in 
which the horn is strongly bowed downward and differs from all the 
other species in that the inwardly bent tips of the horns turn suddenly 
back at the ends. This appearance is shown in his photographie 
figure, in which, however, one of these tips is broken off. Moreover, 
as the figure shows; the skull is that of an immature animal in which | 
the basal portions of the horns are unsolidified and have not been 
preserved, although the spread is 84 cm., a fairly large size for Nile 
Valley animals. The horns of three old bulls shot by Dr. Phillips 
on the Dinder River, are heavy and massive, the bases very broad, 
but not joining medially on the forehead, nor are they convex in this 
region as in the caffer type, but flattened, ridged, and broadly exea- 
vated. Their downward sweep reaches only about to the level of the 
orbit and the tips are blunt and rather short, due in part to wear. 
Cotton (1912) says that the horns of cows have a deeper curve than 
those of the bulls and are not so wide. The long points, backwardly 
turned, of Matschie’s azrakensis seem more like an individual varia- 
tion in an immature animal. In view of these facts, it does not appear 
that the Buffalo of this region is satisfactorily distinguished from 
aequinoctialis of the White Nile, so that it is best at present to use this 
latter name to include the Buffalo of the Blue Nile as well. The 
generic name Syncerus was revived in 1911 by Hollister to distinguish 
the African Buffalo from the Water Buffalo — Bubalus. 
The following measurements of Dr. Phillips’s specimens were made 
in the field :-— 
