ORDER RUMINANTIA. 347 



eloping ; tail terminated by a tuft, hanging down to the 

 houghs. The females have two or four mammse, and the 

 group is confined to Africa. 



The Bubalis. (D. Bubalis.) This species was known 

 to Aristotle, Oppian, and Pliny, but Belon and Caius were 

 the first of the moderns who described it. The proportions 

 of the Bubalis are rather heavy, the head is long and 

 clumsy, and the singular elevation of the shoulders is re- 

 markably striking. Its general appearance is not unlike that 

 of a small cow ; the horns are stout, obliquely and obscurely 

 grooved, approximating at base, then diverging and bent 

 forwards with the tips thrown back again, resembling some 

 of the forms which distinguish Antelopes, excepting that the 

 flexures are the reverse of what they appear in the lyrated 

 species of that genus. In the males they are about thirteen 

 inches long, somewhat less in the females, and black in colour; 

 the eyes are placed very high in the head, and there is a 

 very distinct lachrymary opening. The stature of the ani- 

 mal is above that of a large stag at the shoulders, but it is 

 lower behind, and the body appears less. It is wholly of 

 a yellowish-dun colour; the tuft of the tail alone being 

 sometimes black, and the internal face of the thighs, the 

 pasterns, and the edge of the nether jaw, somewhat whitish. 



The species is found in the deserts, and as it seems also 

 in the forests of Africa, north of the line, from the Nile to 

 Morocco : it appears that Messrs. Denham and Clapperton 

 allude to this species as seen in the woods of Bornou. The 

 Arabs consider them as small cattle or buffaloes, Bakr el 

 Wash, and Bukr al Washi, or cattle of the forest. Accord- 

 ing to Shaw, they live in small troops, and are easily tamed, 

 mixing and grazing with domestic oxen. The ancients had 

 observed that the horns are not used by them in fighting, 

 and we may add that in running their action is not like 

 that of Antelopes. 



We have seen two living specimens and several prepared 



2 A 2 



