Southern Rhodesia Philately: 1964 Definitive Series – ½d Maize

In the corner window of Rhodesia House, looking out on the Strand with contemptuous eyes, is an enormous carved head of a buffalo, probably the only one that can be faced at close quarters without fear of reprisals! The sullen beast shown on the stamp was the subject of a Kodachrome transparency, taken, one imagines, with a telephoto lens. The artist checked other pictures of buffalo for detail, and he has made it clear that this is a very solid, thick-set animal. Its horns sometimes exceed 4 feet in span and measure between 12 and 14 inches across the “palm”. The buffalo is a brave beast, dangerous when cornered and wounded, and often resorting to a cunning move called the “hook”, when it circles round in its own tracks in order to ambush the unwary huntsman.