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Show 476 SIR V. BROOKE ON AFRICAN BUFFALOES. [May 20, In 1686 Grew, in his work on the "Rarities belonging to the Royal Society, and preserved at Gresham College," describes (p. 26) in the following words a specimen at that time contained in tbe collection of the Society :-•*** The horns of a wild Bull They are broad at the roots, but grow very sharp of a sudden, and bended inwards about the middle, so that the tips are not more than two inches distant. See the animal described by Belon and others." On turning to Belon's 'Travels in Asia, Arabia, and Egypt,' published in 1555, I find that at pages 119, 120, he figures and describes a small species of Buffalo, which he calls the " Petit Bceuf d'Afrique." He describes the animal as "about tbe size of the Stag, having the horns notched like those of the Gazelle and raised upon the frontal bones." Belon states that the specimen examined by him was brought from Asamie (probably Azamor of modern maps) a province in Morocco. Pennant in his ** Synopsis' (1771), in plate 8, fig. 3, figures, and at page 9 describes, the specimen which had been described by Grew, as above quoted, nearly a century before, and which was then still preserved in the Royal Society's collection. Both Grew and Pennant appear to have considered this specimen certainly identical with that described by Belon ; but although I think this probable, I have discovered nothing in Belon's writings to enable me to trace the specimen described by him into the possession of the Royal Society. In his ' Quadrupeds,' published some years later, Pennant gives the same figure (which appeared first in his 'Synopsis'), and describes the species under the name of the " Dwarf Buffalo." In Turton's translation of the 'Systema Naturae' (1806) the same specimen is again mentioned (p. 121) and the specific name pumilus conferred on the species. In 1852 Dr. Gray (Cat. M a m m . Brit. Mus.) again figured this old and remarkable specimen, which had passed with the rest of the collection of the Royal Society, in 1780, from Crane Court into the British Museum ; but in the text (p. 28) Dr. Gray expressed his opinion that the specimen represented the young of Bubalus caffer, and placed former references to it under the synonyms of that species. In the ' Proceedings' of this Society for 1863, at p. 157, M r. Blyth, in a paper on African Buffaloes, figures once more this specimen, and, convinced of its specific distinction, but unaware of Turton's previous name, proposes for it that of reclinis. Dr. Gray, in his last Catalogue of the Ruminants in the British Museum (1872), recognizes the specific distinction, and adopts Mr. Blyth's name reclinis. It may be well for me to add that a comparison of the drawings given by Dr. Gray and Mr. Blyth with that given by Pennant, and of these with the original specimen in the British Museum (which is composed of the frontal bones and horns), renders the identity of the specimen, of whose history I have here given an abstract, clear and certain. It was, then, with no small satisfaction that I perceived in m y own specimen (obtained, as before stated, from Mr. Gerrard) an example of the mysterious species which had been, as I then believed, for three centuries represented solely by the Royal Society's old specimen ; and ac- |