HUMPED CATTLE OF ASIA AND AFRICA 1 6 1 
they are of very tall stature, with distinct humps, 
and the horns, instead of rising vertically, curving 
outwards and downwards, somewhat after the fashion 
of those of an African buffalo, and the tips forming a 
small half-spiral turn. A pair of these horns, now in 
the Natural History Branch of the British Museum, 
was brought from Bornu by the explorers Captain 
H. Clapperton and Colonel D. Denham, on their return 
from the Lake Chad expedition of 1822-24, one of 
them being shown in fig. 4 of the plate facing p. 366 
of the volume quoted in the footnote. The length 
along the curve is 42 J- inches, and the basal girth 23I- 
inches. According to the original description, the 
horny sheath is very soft, distinctly fibrous, and at 
the base not much thicker than the human nail, so 
that the whole horns are very light, and the weight 
of the pair scarcely exceeds 4 lb. Moreover, the 
horns are stated to pass imperceptibly into the skin, 
so that there is no possibility of saying exactly 
where the one ends and the other commences. 
This seems to have considerable bearing on the 
presumed derivation of the zebu from the bantin, as 
the latter species has a mass of horny skin on the 
vertex of the skull connecting the bases of the horns. 
The dimensions of the Bornu ox-horns brought 
home by Messrs. Denham and Clapperton are greatly 
exceeded, so far as basal circumference is concerned, 
by plaster-casts of two huge detached horns sent 
some years ago to the British Museum from Madrid. 
In the larger of the two the length is 47-J- inches, and 
the maximum girth 33J inches, the corresponding 
dimensions of the smaller example being 28^ and 
27-J- inches. Both exhibit the small, close, terminal 
half-spiral described by Hamilton Smith as character- 
1 1 
