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Show 372 MR. E. BLYTH ON AFRICAN BUFFALOS. [June 26, been realized, of confirming the impression founded upon that single specimen ; and I have now the pleasure of exhibiting two frontlets of mature growth, which were procured in Equatorial Africa by Mr. Petherick, and together with them two splendid heads of the southern B. coffer for comparison. Of the latter I have seen a very considerable number of skulls and frontlets, of all ages and stages of development, but never one that resembled the specimens from Equatorial Africa now exhibited; and the living animal at present in the Society's Menagerie is distinctly of the southern race as distinguishable from the other, as shown by the much greater elongation as well as thickness of that terminal portion of its horns which constitutes their upward curvature. The accompanying figures (I, la) of the two frontlets from Equatorial Africa and that (fig. 2) of the superb Cape specimen, one of the two exhibited before the Meeting, were photographed at the same focus, and therefore present exactly the relative size which the specimens bear towards each other; and the difference is so very considerable, not only as compared with the noble example of B. caffer represented, but with all that I have ever seen of the latter from South Africa, that I think the equatorial race should at least be recognized as B. coffer, var. arquinoctialis, if not more decidedly as Bubalus arquinoctialis. By Mr. S. W . Baker, who possesses two fine skulls of the Equatorial Buffalo, I am informed that the species is not common on the banks of the White Nile, but |
