BOVIDE 361 
The first group includes the Buffaloes (genus Bubalus), chiefly 
characterised by their more or less flattened and angulated horns, 
which incline upwards and backwards, with an inward curve 
towards their tips, and are placed below the plane of the occiput, 
or vertex of the skull. The premaxille reach to the nasals, and 
the vomer is peculiar in being so much ossified as to join the 
posterior border of the palate. The back has a distinct ridge in 
the region of the withers; and the forehead is frequently convex. 
Oriental and Ethiopian region, and Celebes. 
The most generalised representative of this group is the small 
Anoa (B. depressicornis) of Celebes, the type of the genus Anoa or 
Probubalus, which has the same cranial structure as in the more 
typical Buffaloes, to the young of which (as was pointed out by 
the late Professor Garrod) it presents a striking resemblance. Its 
colour is black ; and the short and prismatic horns are directed 
upwards from the forehead. In the Pliocene Siwaliks of India 
there occur the remains of larger Buffaloes (B. occipitalis and 
B. acuticornis) closely allied to the Anoa, but with longer and more 
distinctly angulated horns. The still larger B. platyceros of the 
last-named deposits, in which the horns are wide-spreading and 
much flattened, appears to be in some respects intermediate between 
the preceding and following forms. The typical Indian Buffalo 
(Bos buffelus), which has been domesticated over South-East Asia, 
Egypt, and Southern Europe, is, in the wild state, a gigantic animal 
with enormous horns. These horns are longer, more slender, and 
more outwardly directed in the female than in the male; and in 
the former sex may have a length of more than 6 feet from base 
to tip. They are widely separated at their bases, the forehead is 
very convex, and the ears are not excessively large, and have no 
distinct fringe. These Buffaloes frequent swampy and moist dis- 
tricts in several parts of India, but it is in many instances difficult 
to decide whether they belong to really wild or to feral races. 
Very large skulls, specifically indistinguishable from those of the 
existing form, occur in the Pleistocene deposits of the Narbada 
valley in India; while an allied, if not specifically identical form, 
occurs in the Pliocene of the same country. There is some doubt 
whether B. antiquus of the Pleistocene of Algeria is most nearly 
related to the Indian or to the African species. 
In Africa two species of Buffalo are recognised by Sir Victor 
Brooke, namely the large B. caffer, occurring typically at the Cape, 
but said by this writer to range to Abyssinia, and the smaller 
B. pwmilus, which seems to have a very wide distribution. The 
skulls of both these forms are shorter than in the Indian species, 
while the horns are also shorter, much more curved inwardly, and 
more approximated on the forehead. In the large typical form of 
1 Proc. Zool. Soc. 1878, p. 474. 
