The head of the bubalus is narrow and very long, the eyes are placed very high, the forehead very short and narrow, the horns permanent, black, thick, and very closely annulated: they are close to each other at the root, but spread very distant at their extremities; they are crooked backwards, and twisted like a corkscrew; his shoulders are so elevated that they form a sort of bunch upon the withers; the tail is nearly a foot long, and furnished with a bunch of hair at its extremity; and the ears resemble those of the antelope. Kolbe calls this animal by the name of _elk_, although it only resembles the elk by its hair being finer at the root, than in the middle or at the points; this character is peculiar to these two animals, for the hair of almost every other quadruped is thicker at the root than at the middle and point. The hair is nearly of the same colour as the elk, though much shorter, thinner, and softer. These alone are the resemblances between the bubalus and the elk; in every other respect these two animals are entirely different. The horns of the elk are larger and heavier than those of the stag, and are renewed every year; the bubalus, on the contrary, does not shed its horns, but they continue their growth during life, and in form and texture are like those of the gazelles. He resembles the gazelles also by the shape of his body, the smallness of his head, the length of his neck, the position of his eyes, ears, and horns, and in the shape and length of the tail. The gentlemen of the Academy of Sciences, to whom one of these animals was presented by the name of the _Barbary cow_, and who adopted that denomination, did not hesitate to acknowledge it to be the _bubalus_ of the ancients. Though we have rejected this denomination of _Barbary cow_, as equivocal and confused, yet as for the rest, we could not do better than copy the exact description those gentlemen have given of this animal, and by which we perceive it is neither gazelle, goat, cow, elk, nor stag, but a particular and distinct species. This animal is also the same that Caius has described under the name of _buselaphus_, and I was surprised that the gentlemen of the Academy did not make this remark, since all the characters which Caius gives to his buselaphus agree with their Barbary cow. In the royal cabinet is, first, the skeleton of a bubalus the gentlemen of the Academy bad described and dissected, by the name of the Barbary cow. Secondly, a head much larger than that of this skeleton, the horns of which are also much longer and thicker. Thirdly, a part of another head, with horns as large as the foregoing, but their form and direction are different. There are, therefore, in the bubalus, as well as in the gazelles, antelopes, and others, varieties in the size of the body, and in the shape of the horns; but these differences do not appear to be considerable enough to make distinct and separate species.