Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/490

442  1em  BUFFALO, the English name of Bubalus, a genus of Ruminant Mammals, belonging to the family Bovidce, and including the well-known Indian and South African species. The Indian Buffalo (Bubalus bu/alus) is characterized by its arched forehead, large horns compressed at the base, slightly triangular, and curved in the form of a half moon, and its thick hide covered sparingly with coarse hairs, which become still more scanty in aged individuals. It is a native of India and of the islands forming the Indo-Malay Archipelago, where it now occurs in a state of domestication, and forms a valuable beast of burden ; but although it has for ages been under the control of man, the Bainsha or tame buffalo shows little or no variation from the wild form. The Arna or Wild Buffalo is found in great herds through out India and the adjacent islands, frequenting swampy grounds in the neighbourhood of woods, eating the long, coarse grass which abounds in such localities, and loving above all things to roll itself in mire, or to plunge up to the ears in any pool or stream it may come upon. This fondness for moisture is equally marked in the tame variety, and is decidedly inconvenient when the animal, laden with goods, yields to its instinct and lies down in any stream that may cross its path. The rutting season occurs in autumn, when several females follow a single male, forming for the time a small herd. The period of gestation lasts for ten months, and the female produces one or two calves at a birth. The Arna is a powerful and courageous animal, capable it is said of overthrowing an elephant, and generally more than a match even for the male tiger, which usually declines the combat when not impelled to it by hunger. The Indian driver of a herd of tame buffaloes does not shrink from entering a tiger-frequented jungle, his cattle, with their massive horns, making short work of any tiger that may come in their way. Buffalo fights and fights between buffaloes and tigers form principal features in the public entertainments of Indian princes. In Ceylon the buffalo is put to more useful purposes, where, according to Tenneut, the natives make an ingenious use of it when shooting waterfowl in the salt marshes. &quot; Being an object to which the birds are accustomed, the Singhalese train the buffaloes to the sport, and concealed behind the animal, browsing listlessly along, they guide it by ropes attached to its horns, and thus creep undiscovered within shot of the flock.&quot; These are known as &quot; sporting buffaloes.&quot; The domestic buffalo has spread from its original home in India over the greater part of Southern Asia and of North Africa, and was introduced towards the close of the 6th century into Greece and Italy, forming an invaluable beast of burden in the marshy districts of those countries, where the great breadth of its feet, somewhat resembling in this respect those of the reindeer, give it a decided advantage over the horse and ox. It grazes in herds in the Pontine marshes, where, according to Scaliger, it will lie for hours submerged almost to the muzzle. The milk of the buffalo is plentiful and of excellent quality, the Hindoos making it into a kind of butter called ghee ; its flesh, however, is not held in much estimation. The Cape Buffalo (Bubahis ca/er] is nearly equal in size and fully equal in strength and courage to its Indian congener, from which it is readily distinguished by the form of its horns, these being immensely broad at the base, where they approximate so closely as almost to meet, thus forming, especially in old bulls, a solid rugose mass impenetrable to bullet, and extending from the eye to the back of the head, then spreading horizontally and. curving upwards and inwards to the tips, which are usually 4 feet apart. The hide, which is thick and tough, is thinly clad with hair, old animals being entirely naked with the excep tion of a slight fringe along the back and withers. This buffalo roams in herds over the plains of Central and Southern Africa, always in the near vicinity of water. Formerly herds sometimes numbered five or six hundred, but such has been the havoc wrought among them in recent years by hunters that rarely are they to be seen in com panies of more than ten, while in the colonized portion of South Africa they are rapidly dying out. Nor is man their only enemy, for by night when he ceases to disturb they are liable to the attack of the lion, and by this means the wounded, of which there are great numbers, and the diseased are cut off. The Hon. W. H. Drummond, in his work on The Large Game of South Africa (1875), gives it as his opinion that in &quot; a few years a buffalo will be as scarce as an elephant now is.&quot; This species has never been domesticated, probably owing more to the uncivilized condition of the native inhabitants than to any special intractability in the buffalo itself. Like its Indian ally it is fond of the water, which it visits at regular intervals during the twenty-four hours ; it also plasters itself with mud which, when hardened by the sun, protects it from the bite of the great gadflies which in spite of its thick hide seem to cause it considerable annoyance. It is also relieved of a portion of the parasitic ticks, so common on the hides of thick-skinned animals, by means of the red- beaked rhinoceros birds, a dozen or more of which may be seen partly perched on its horns and partly moving about on its back, and picking up the ticks on which they feed. The hunter is often guided by these birds in his search for the buffalo, but oftener still they give timely warning to their host of the dangerous proximity of the hunter, and have thus earned the title of &quot; the buffalo s guardian birds.&quot; The Cape Buffalo is the most formidable of the large game of South Africa. Generally, however, it attacks only when wounded, although&quot; rogues &quot; or &quot;soli taires &quot; terms applied to old bulls which for some reason or other have been expelled from the herd and which wander about morose and savage often attack without 