OTHER DOMESTICATED CATTLE 183 
out the Malay countries, a large portion of China, 
India, Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Persia, Mesopotamia, 
Syria, Hungary, the landes of Gascony, Italy, and, I 
believe, Spain, as well as Egypt, Algeria, Tunis, and 
probably Morocco. 
In Italy they frequent the hot malarious plains, 
where they delight to wallow in the slimy mud, the 
districts where they are specially numerous being the 
so-called maremmas of Tuscany, the low-lying lands 
near the mouth of the Tiber, the Pontine marshes, 
and the swamps of Pesto. In the Pontine marshes 
they wallow by the score amid the tall reeds, standing 
still to stare at an occasional carriage when near the 
high road, and when tormented by gadflies muzzle- 
deep in the water. 
According to Messrs. Hehn and Stallybrass^ 
buffaloes were first seen in Italy about the year 
A.D. 600, in the reign of the Lombardian king, Agiluff, 
when, as we learn from a contemporary monkish 
writer, who alludes to them as bubali^ they were 
regarded with astonishment by the natives. This 
usage of the term bubali leads, it may be mentioned, 
the authors just cited ^ to doubt whether the reference 
to the aurochs commonly supposed to be indicated 
by this word is correct.^ They point out that the 
word bubalis probably referred originally to an 
antelope — most likely the bubal hartebeest of north- 
western Africa — but as there are no true antelopes 
in western Europe, it must have been used in that 
part of the world to indicate cattle of some kind. 
This being so, there is nothing more likely than that 
it may have been applied indifferently to the aurochs 
^ The Wanderings of Plants and Animals, London, 1885, p. 355. 
2 Op. cit. p. 494. ^ Stipra, p. 40. 
