. The game animals of Africa . ffaloes, comparatively speaking, left this portion of the continent these fine animals have entirely ceasedto exist over vast areas throughout which they once ranged in greatnumbers. For my part, I do not for a moment believe that if a collection of1000 heads of buffalo bulls existed to-day, which had been brought AFRICAN BUFFALO 75 together indiscriminately from every part of South Africa wherethese animals were once found, either Dr. Matschie or any one elsecould tell from what district each came. I have seen thousands uponthousands of Cape buffaloes,
. The game animals of Africa . ffaloes, comparatively speaking, left this portion of the continent these fine animals have entirely ceasedto exist over vast areas throughout which they once ranged in greatnumbers. For my part, I do not for a moment believe that if a collection of1000 heads of buffalo bulls existed to-day, which had been brought AFRICAN BUFFALO 75 together indiscriminately from every part of South Africa wherethese animals were once found, either Dr. Matschie or any one elsecould tell from what district each came. I have seen thousands uponthousands of Cape buffaloes, and examined hundreds of pairs of horns—bulls and cows—from such widely separated parts of the country asCape Colony, the neighbourhood of the Pungwi river, and the Chobi,not to mention many intermediate areas, and nothing struck me morethan the great individual differences between horns, not only in everysuch district, but in every herd in the same district. In distinguishing one race of buffalo from another, Dr. Matschie. Fig. 26.— Horns of the Senec-ambian Buffalo. seems to rely a great deal on the comparative length of the smoothtips of the horns. But surely this is a matter of age. Buffalo bullsin their prime, when they are always found with the herds of cows,have the smooth tips of their horns very long and usually growing ina beautiful curve ; but as they grow older they gradually wear off thepoints of their horns, so that the horns of really old bulls are alwaysvery different in appearance from those of younger animals, which,although they may have obtained the full horn-growth over the fore-head, have not yet commenced to wear the points down. Both the two buffalo-heads referred to in the above resume ofDr. Matschies paper—the one shot by Mr. J. G. Millais on theNuanetsi river, and the other the one figured on page 72, and now 76 CATTLE in the possession of Mr. F. H. Barber—are those of animals in theirprime, with the long points grown to their maximum length
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