specimens are essential before the point can be regarded as settled. Not
impossibly the skull or a female buffalo with a gray pelage figured by Dr.
Pechuel-Loesche in the memoir cited above, may prove to belong to the
present form. Unfortunately, the exact locality whence that specimen was
obtained is unknown.
Fig. 23.—Skull and horns of male Lake Tchad Buffalo. From the type specimen
in the British Museum.
In the presumed male the horns have a length o f . i8£ inches along the
outer curve, with a basal circumstance of io f inches, "and an interval of
5^ inches between the tips. In the presumed female1 the corresponding
dimensions are 17, n-§> and 6 f inches.
1 In the Records o f Big Game, p. 275, Mr. Rowland Ward takes the same view as to the sexes of
these two skulls.
Distribution.—The neighbourhood of Lake Tchad, situated in West
Central Africa due north-east of the Gulf of Guinea.
2. T he A l g e r ia n B u f fa lo—Bos a n t iq u u s (Extinct)
Bubalus antiquus, Duvernoy, C. R . Acad. Parish veil, xxxiii. p. 595
(1851) ; Gervais, Zool. et Pa l. Générales, ser. 1, p. 93, pi. xix. (1867-69) ;
Riitimeyer, Abhandl. schweiz. pal. Ges. vol. v. p. 145 (1878) ; P. Thomas,
Bull. Soc. Zool. France, 1881, p. 30, pi. ii. ; Lydekker, Cat. Foss. Mamm.
Brit. Mus. pt. ii. p. 29 (1885) ; Pomel, Carte Géol. d'Algérie—Pa l. Mon.
Les Bubalides (1 893).
Bubalus baini, Seeley, Geol. Mag. decade 3, vol. viii, p. 192 (1891).
Bos antiquus, Lydekker, Horns and Hoofs, p. 45 (1893).
CharactersWSs gigantic species with the nasal bones of the comparatively
short type distinctive of the existing African buffalo, but with the
rims of the sockets of the eyes much less prominent than in the Cape race,
and the horn-cores’ (fig. 2, p. 2 1), which are of enormous extent, widely
separated on the forehead, and with a curvature not unlike that of the Cape
and north-eastern races of the living African species. In their downward
curvature at the. base, and comparatively slight angulation for the greater
part of their length the horn-cores come decidedly nearer to the African
than to the Indian buffalo ; and the slight prominence of the orbites only
an exaggeration of a characteristic feature of the former, which is most
apparent in the smaller races. Specimens have been described, measuring
at least 1 1 feet along the curve of the horn-cores, and in one example the
same measurement has been estimated at 14 feet. In addition to this, the
length of the portions of the horns themselves covering the tips of the horn-
cores has to be taken into account.
Remains of this magnificent buffalo occur typically in the superficial
deposits of Algeria, but skulls from the corresponding formations of the Cape,