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Show 4 78 SIR V. BROOKE ON AFRICAN BUFFALOES. [May 20, tion. They represent an old male and two females. The former was presented to the Museum by Dr. Baikie ; the two latter were purchased from his collection. Unfortunately there is no exact locality attached to any of these specimens; but from the very slight Fig. 3. 1_0 Head of Bubalus, $ , brought by Capt. Clapperton from Central Africa. One of the types of B. brachyceros (Gray). interest which Dr. Baikie appears to have taken in natural history, there can be little doubt that they were obtained somewhere along the course of the Niger, and that they represent the Buffalo of the countries through which he passed. In the head which I consider to be that of the male the horny sheaths are lost; but the very flattened compressed character of the horn-cores shows decidedly that the horns resembled closely those exhibited in Pel's specimens. In the specimens which I attribute to the female the horns are present, and, with the exception of one particular, which I shall mention presently, resemble so closely Captain Clapperton's specimens that I have no doubt whatever but they belong to the same species. This character consists in the points of the horns of the older of Dr. Baikie's females being turned suddenly, and pointed backwards in a manner exhibited very slightly in either of Captain Clapperton's specimens. In the younger female from the Niger this character is absent. But, remarkable as it m a y appear, a similar variation is observable in the two specimens in the Leiden Museum. That figured on the first plate in the work above referred to represents the specimen in which the points of the horns are turned boldly backwards and reclined, in a manner precisely similar to that shown by the specimen now before the Society (figs. 1 & 2) |
