133—46 CRANIA OR RUMINANTS RROM THE INDIAN TERTIARIES. 
The cranium is immensely larger and more massive in all its proportions than 
that of the largest male Arni I could obtain for comparison. All the ridges and 
hollows for muscular attachment are much more prominent, indicating an animal 
of immense strength and power. Size alone, however, would afford no ground for 
specific distinction ; since, as is well known to sportsmen, the recent buffaloes of 
Assam are diminishing steadily in the size of their skulls and horns under the con- 
stant persecution to which they are subject ; in early times they were probably of 
much larger size than any specimens now existing. 
As the resemblance between the crania of the living and fossil Indian buffaloes 
is so close, it will be best to commence by comparing the two together; on the 
frontal aspect the cranium of Buhalus 'palcBindicus is considerably broader in pro- 
portion to its length, and the infra-orbital region is less contracted laterally ; the 
frontals are more elevated between the inferior angles of the horn-cores, in con- 
sequence of which there is a sharp descent from this part of the forehead to the 
orbits, in place of the regular and even slope which we find in the forehead of the 
Arni. 
In the figured specimen the superior border of the orbit is shorter and thicker and 
stands out more abruptly from the lateral surface of the frontal than in the Arni ; 
the anterior border of the orbit is produced laterally almost to the same extent as 
the posterior border, in consequence of wRich in the frontal aspect of the cranium 
only a very narrow segment of the orbit comes into view ; the axis of the orbit 
being directed almost immediately outwards. In the cranium of Buhalus arni, on 
the other hand, the anterior border of the orbit is much less produced than the 
posterior border, and consequently the greater portion of the orbit is visible from 
the front; the axis being directed outwards and forwards. In Dr. Ealconer’s 
restored figure of the cranium of Buhalus palceindicus, however, the orbits are 
drawn of the same shape and direction as those of Buhalus arni, and the direction 
of the anterior border of the orbit in the Arni occasionally varies in different 
individuals ; so that the above cannot be taken as a constant character. 
Between the orbit and the supra-orbital foramen there is a very prominent ridge 
of bone, forming the external border of the supra-orbital sulcus, this external border 
being much higher than the internal border ; in the figured specimen there is no supra- 
orbital foramen on the right side, although the sulcus is present. The anterior 
border of the orbit is entire, and not notched as in the Arni. Above the orbit the 
cranium has a much greater depth than occurs in the cranium of the’ Arni; tliis is 
probably due to the greater development of the frontal sinuses. The interval 
between the longer border of the frontal, overhanging the temporal fossa, and the 
vertex cranii, is 4-9 inches, while in the Arni it is only 3-6 inches. 
In a profile view of the two crania, that of the Arni is seen to slope rapidly and 
continuously away from the vertex cranii to the extremity of the nasals, so that the 
anterior surface of the nasals, at a distance of two inches below the orbit, is situated 
one and a half inches below the plane of the superior border of the orbit. (The crania 
