that 

 hush 



122 Great and Small Game of Africa 



As regards the character of the country most frequently affected by this 

 buffalo, there exist curiously contradictory theories upon the subject. In my 

 earlier years in West Africa I was given to understand by Europeans more 

 or less intimately acquainted with the country that it was in the thick dense 

 bush of the big waterways, and in the thick forest belt which extends parallel 

 with the sea throughout the west coast to a depth of .00 miles from the sea, 

 hould find this animal. Others said that it was in the more open 

 50 to 500 miles from the sea, that I should come across it. My 

 own experience certainly tends towards the 

 after theory. The horns of the species are 

 to be found much more frequently amongst 

 the natives of the open bush country than 

 amongst those inhabiting the dense forest 

 belt, though it is not absolutely unknown in 

 that belt. Again, as one penetrates toward 

 the Sahara, and open plains take the place 

 of light bush, it apparently disappears. So, 

 on the whole, I am inclined to lay down that 

 it prefers a light open bush country, well 

 watered and with consequent small belts of 

 spccimen ' thick bush in which it can lie up in the 



daytime. The belt of forest beside the waterways may be replaced by the 

 thick dense bush of the big gullies of the plateau-topped hills of Nigeria. 



These buffaloes are as a rule solitary in their habits, and, in pairs, with 

 perhaps a calf, live their lives much alone. Recently, however, near Lokoya, 

 in Nigeria, at the junction of the Niger and the Benue Rivers, I came across 

 a herd of twenty with which I came up after tracking it for two hours. 

 Up to that time the only tracks I had seen were of solitary animals or of 

 pairs. They appear to water just before dawn, and then feed slowly either 

 uphill towards the dense shady bush in the hillside gullies, or through the 



IS.— Skull and Horns of Co 

 Buffalo; from Major A. J. Arnold's 



