Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/158

Rh 146 Q U A Q U A only to have terminated when towards the close of the republic trial by permanent courts (qmestiones pcrpetuee) was extended to criminal cases. 1 The quaestors had also charge of the public treasury (aerarium) in the temple of Saturn, and this was in the later times of the republic their most important function. They kept the keys of the treasury and had charge of its contents, including not only coin and bullion but also the military standards and a large number of public documents, which in later times comprised all the laws as well as the decrees of the senate. Their functions as keepers of the treasury were withdrawn from the urban quaestors by Augustus and transferred to other magistrates, but the office itself continued to exist into the 3d century, though as to the nature of the duties attached to it we have little or no information. 2. The Military Qutestors. These were instituted in 421 B.C., when two new quaestors were added to the original two. They never had a distinctive appellation like that of the urban quaestors, from whom, however, they were clearly distinguished by the fact that, while the urban quaestors did not stand in a special relation of subordination to any particular magistrate, a non-urban quaestor was regularly assigned as an indispensable assistant or adjutant to every general in command, whose name or title the quaestor usually added to his own. 2 Originally they were the adjutants of the consuls only, afterwards of the provincial praetors, and still later of the proconsuls and propraetors. The dictator alone among military commanders had no quaestor, because a quaestor would have been a limitation to his powers. The governor of Sicily had two quaestors ; all other governors and commanders had but one. Between the quaestor and his superior a close personal relation, analogous to that between a son and his father, existed, and was not severed when their official connexion ceased. Not till the close of the republic do cases occur of a quaestor being sent to a province invested with prsetorial and even consular powers ; in one case at least the quaestor so sent had a second quaestor placed under him. The duties of the military quaestor, like those of the treasury quaestor, were primarily financial. Moneys due to a provincial governor from the state treasury were often, perhaps regularly, received and disbursed by the quaestor; the magazines seem to have been under his charge ; he coined money, on which not unfrequently his name appears alone. The booty taken in war was not necessarily under the control of the quaestor, but was dealt with, especially in later times, by inferior officers called prsefecti fabrum. But, though his duties were primarily financial, the quaestor was after all the chief assistant or adjutant of his superior in command, and as such he was invested with a certain degree of military power ; under the republic his military rank was superior to that of the legates, though under the empire this relation was reversed. When the general left his province before the arrival of his successor he usually committed it to the care of his quaestor, and, if he died or was incapacitated from naming his successor, the quaestor acted as his representative. Unlike the urban quaestor, the military quaestor possessed not a criminal but a civil jurisdiction corresponding to that of the aediles at Rome. 3. The Italian Qu&stors. The subjugation of Italy occasioned the institution (in 267 B.C.) of four new quaestors, who appear to have been called qu&stores classici because they were originally intended to superintend the building of the fleet (dassis) ; their functions, however, are very imperfectly known. Though no doubt intended to assist the consuls, they were not subordinated (like the military quaestors) to a special consul. They were stationed at Ostia, at Gales in Campania, and in Gaul about the Padus (Po). The station of the fourth is not mentioned ; perhaps it was Lilybaeum in Sicily. QUAGGA, or COUAGGA, an animal of the genus Equus (see HORSE, vol. xii. p. 175), nearly allied to the zebra, which formerly was met with in vast herds on the great plains of South Africa between the Cape Colony and the Vaal river, but now, in common with most of the larger wild animals of that region, becoming extremely scarce, owing to the encroachments of European civilization. In length of ears and character of tail it more resembles the horse than it does the ass, although it agrees with the latter in wanting the small bare callosity in the inner side of the hind leg, just below the hock, characteristic of the horse. The colour of the head, neck, and upper parts of 1 It is often supposed that the qusestores parricidii were an old magistracy quite distinct from the ordinary quaestors. For the identification of the two, see Mommsen, Jiiimisches Staatsrecht, ii., pt. 1, p. 506. 2 Thus Cicero speaks of the provincia consvlaris of the quaestor, and we find quaestor Cn. Pompei, &c. the body is reddish-brown, irregularly banded and marked with dark brown stripes, stronger on the head and neck and gradually becoming fainter until lost behind the shoulder. There is a broad dark median dorsal stripe. The under surface of the body, the legs, and tail are nearly white, without stripes. The crest is very high, surmounted by a standing mane, banded alternately brown and white. Though never really domesticated, quaggas have occasion- ally been trained to harness. The accompanying figure is Quagga. reduced from a painting made from one of a pair which were driven in Hyde Park by Mr Sheriff Parkins in the early part of the present century. The name is an imita- tion of the shrill barking neigh of the animal, " ouag-ga, ouag-ga," the last syllable very much prolonged. It must be remembered, however, in reading books of African travel that the same word is very commonly applied by hunters to another and more completely striped species, called by zoologists Burchell's zebra. QUAIL (Old French Quaille, Mod. French Cattle, Italian Quaglia, Low Latin Quaquila, Dutch Kwdkkel, and Kwartel, German Wachtel, Danish Vagtel), a very well- known bird throughout almost all countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa, in modern ornithology the Cotumix communis or C. dactylisonans. This last epithet was given from the peculiar three- syllabled call-note of the cock, which has been grotesquely rendered in several European lan- guages, and in some parts of Great Britain the species is popularly known by the nickname of " Wet-my-lips " or " Wet-my-feet." The Quail varies somewhat in colour, and the variation is rather individual than attributable to local causes; but generally the plumage may be described as reddish-brown above, almost each feather being trans- versely patched with dark brown interrupted by a longitu- dinal stripe of light buff; the head is dark brown above, with three longitudinal streaks of ochreous- white ; the sides of the breast and flanks are reddish-brown, distinctly striped with ochreous- white ; the rest of the lower parts are pale buff, clouded with a darker shade, and passing into white on the belly. The cock, besides being generally brighter in tint, not unfrequently has the chin and a double-throat band of reddish or blackish-brown, which marks are want- ing in the hen, whose breast is usually spotted. Quails breed on the ground, as all gallinaceous birds commonly do, and lay from nine to fifteen eggs of a yellowish-white, blotched and spotted with dark brown. Though essenti- ally migratory by nature, not a few Quails pass the winter in the northern hemisphere and even in Britain, and many more in southern Europe. In March and April they cross the Mediterranean from the south on the way to their breed-