Wild Sheep 125 



deeper will be the sense of satisfaction with which the sportsman views 

 one lying at his feet. A. J. Arnold. 



Lake Tchad Buffalo (Bos coffer brachyceros) 



Almost nothing is at present known of the habits of this buffalo. It is 

 another of the links between the Cape and Abyssinian races. It was origin- 

 ally discovered by Denham and Clapperton, in the first half of this century, 

 during their Niger explorations, and skulls with horns brought home by 

 those enterprising travellers are to be seen in the Natural History Museum. 

 One pair of horns measure as follows : — length on outside curve, 18^ 

 inches ; circumference, ioj inches ; from tip to tip, 5^ inches. 



H. A. Bryden. 



THE SHEEP 



As the oxen form one sub -family (Bovince) of the hollow- horned 

 ruminants, so the sheep and goats, both of which are very poorly 

 represented in Africa, constitute a second (Caprinte). From the Bovince 

 the members of this latter group are distinguished by the hairy muzzle, 

 the form of the horns, which are generally small, or even wanting in the 

 females, the higher carriage of the head, the presence of only two teats in 

 the female, and, above all, by the structure of the cheek-teeth. In the 

 upper jaw these teeth, although tall, have much narrower crowns than 

 those of the oxen, and the number of isolated areas of ivory exposed on 

 their grinding-surfaces is one less in each tooth. The horns of goats and 

 sheep are always more or less angulated, are frequently knotted or strongly 

 wrinkled, and generally form either an open or a screw -like spiral. 

 The two genera are very closely allied, and as they have so few African 



