Wild Ox e n ,Sh e e p , G oa.t s . Pl a t e V II .
CAPE BUFFALO.
iJm,
the Abyssinian buiFuIo a race of the Cape species, but keeps the western
forms apart as a second species. Any one who compares a skull of the
Abyssinian buffalo with the West African specimen described by Dr. Gray
as B. centralis will scarcely fail to be convinced of the impossibility of
maintaining such a distinction.
Distribution.— Africa 'south of the Sahara.
a. C a p e , or B l a c k R a c e—Bos c a f f e r t y p ic u s
Characters.-^-Size large and build very heavy and clumsy, the height
at the shoulder reaching to from 4 feet 10 inches to 5|Setp|§ skull massive,
with the profile immediately below the horns deeply concave. Hair,
except on the margins of the ears and at the tip of the tail, where it is
long, comparatively itanty in the adult, but thicker in the young ; general
colour black, frequently with a reddish tinge, most- marked on the legs
and in young animals. Hornsljjarge and massive, exceeding twice the
long diameter of the skull in length; at first directed mainly outwards,
but also dipping boldly downwards and backwards so as to -be depressed
much behind the plane ot the eyes, then curving upwards, forwards, and
inwards, but their tips widely separated, and not coming within the lines
of the lateral borders of the skull; their basal anterior surfaces in old bulls
raised into.’ huge convex bosses, nearly meeting in the middle line of the
forehead ; in cows these basal bslligsj much less developed, and separated
by a broad, hairy space. Although the profilejMf the head immediately
below the horns is markedly concave, that of the lower part of the face is
as distinctly convex.
The following are the dimensions of the twelve largest pairs of horns
recorded by Mr. Rowland Ward in the 1896 edition of his Records o f Big
Game :—
o