Zoography Author:William Wood Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BUFFALO. SPECIFIC CHARACTER. Bos Bv Ball's. B. comibus resupinatis intortis, notice plants. Syst. Nat. Linn. ed. Gmel. I. p. 206. Horns straight to a gr... more »eat length from the base, then bending upwards; flat on the forepart. Bos Indicus. flirt. Hist. Nat. viii. c. 45. Buffle. Kolle. Dcsc. du Cap de Bonne Esp. t. 3. p. 25. pi. at p. 54. fig. 3. Buffalo. . . Sin. Buff. . 6. p. 150. pi. 170. Penn. Hist. Quadr. ed. 3. v. 1. p. 28. Bew. Quadr. p. 43. Shaw Gen. Zoo/. 1. p. 401. Buffaloes are natives of the southern regions of Asia and Africa, and in size give place only to the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the hippopotamus. The Cape variety of this animal (Bos Coffer Linn.) is a very strong and fierce creature. His frame is remarkably muscular; and although not taller than a common-sized ox, the African buffalo is at least twice his bulk. The horns at the base are each twelve or thirteen inches broad, and are separated only by a narrow channel, which fills up with age, and gives to the animal a forehead completely covered with a rugged mass of horn as hard as rock. From the base they diverge downwards, and are incurved towards the points, which are generally distant from each other about three feet. Mr. Barrow informs us, that the fibres of its muscles are like so many bundles of cords; and they are covered with a hide little inferior in strength and thickness to that of the rhinoceros. The peasantry prefer this hide to the skin of all other animals for cutting into thongs, to be used as traces and harness for their carts and waggons. The flesh is too coarse-grained to be good; yet the farmers generally salt it as food for their Hottentots. A singular circumstance is mentioned by Mr. Barrow respecting this kind of buffalo. He says that the teeth are always so perfe...« less