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Show 164 MR. R. LYDEKKER ON A [June 7, of Ballynahinch Castle, Co. Galway, in the Mfumbiro district, on a volcanic mountain west of Kiva, on the borderland between the Congo Free State and German East Africa, in forest at an elevation of between 7000 and 8000 feet. These specimens I cannot identify with any described form, and therefore propose to regard them as representing a new race of African Buffalo. Although I cannot find Mfumbiro in any atlas, I take the district in question to be the area lying between the Albert Nyanza and Tanganyika, that is to say, approximately, the Mapi country. The following note on the Buffalo to which the specimens belonged has been communicated by Mr. Mathews:- " The hide of this animal is not bare like that of the South- African Buffalo, but covered with a dense crop of black hair all over. The height of the buffalo is considerably less than that of the big South and East African races. The animal seems to me to be a race midway between the Congo and the East-African Buffalo. It shows, however, no tendency to red. In addition to its small size, peculiar shape of horns, and density of pelt, the only peculiarity I noticed was that the tail had a white tip. I shot another bull out of the same herd, exactly like the one of which I sent you the skull, only younger and smaller." The skull and horns are evidently those of a fully-adult bull, and the latter present the following measurements:- Along outer curve ..................21 "5 inches. Basal girth ........................... ...19*7 ,, Greatest span ....................... ....25'5 ,, Tip to tip interval .................. 15‘0 „ Compared with the various local forms included in my work on ‘Wild Oxen, Sheep, and Goats,' under the specific title of Bos (Buhalus) caffier, the skull and horns of the present form come nearest to those of B. caffer nanus of the Congo region. They are, however, considerably larger than the latter ; and the horns (text-fig. 31, p. 165) are thicker, less sharply incurved, and with a much more sinuous front surface, bending sharply backwards immediately behind the basal frontal expansion, and then curving somewhat forwards with the commencement of the inward inclination. An interval of about an inch and a half separates the two horns in the middle of the forehead. Speaking generally, these appendages are intermediate between those of the Cape and those of the Congo Buffalo, although on the whole nearer to the latter. Here it may be mentioned that there is an almost complete gradation, as regards the extent of the frontal sinuosity, from the horns of the Cape Buffalo through those of the present and the Congo forms, to the Senegambian race (B. caffer planiceros), in which this curvature is practically obsolete. From the typical red Congo Buffalo (B. c. nanus) the present form differs by its deep-black coat, whereby it agrees with the Cape animal, from which, however, it is broadly distinguished by the dirty-white tail-tuft. In reference to Mr. Mathews's note, |