Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/68

44 already almost totally disappeared from the open pastures of the Albany district of Cape Colony, to which they had formerly given life and interest. This may be taken as the first definite mention of the retreat of the true Quagga before advancing civilization—a merely natural though regrettable result of the progress of the white man. When Captain (afterwards Sir) W. Cornwallis Harris, in 1836, penetrated into the far interior, he found the true Quagga abundant on the plains south of the Vaal, whilst north of that river it was replaced by the equally plentiful Burchell Zebra; and, indeed, the exuberant profusion of other great game was on a similar scale, for the spreading veldt was alive with Eland and Gnu, Rhinoceros and Springbok; whilst the glittering salt-pans bloomed with purple masses of Blesbok and Bontebok. We can only in these days see in imagination what Harris saw in reality; yet we can picture the Quaggas in the days of prosperity, feeding in a huge crescent, occasionally emitting a barking neigh, their striped heads turning this way and that, and their snowy tails whisking in the blazing sunshine. Harris, however, tells us that even in his day these animals had disappeared from many places in the Colony where they had formerly abounded, although in the wild interior they still existed in immense herds. The species, though rarer, was yet very far from being extinct. About 1850, however, the Boer hunters appeared. Shooting neither for food nor for legitimate sport, but for hides alone, they attacked without pity the noble game animals which had delighted Harris and many others with their abundance and variety, and ruin fell everywhere on the denizens of this sportsman's paradise. The game at first appeared to defy all efforts to reduce its numbers, but so persistently was the massacre carried on by the hide-hunters in season and out of season, no close-time being allowed, that at last it began to vanish rapidly, and upon the true Quagga, with its now fearfully diminished range south of the Vaal, this persecution fell with double force. These unfortunate animals were exterminated in Cape Colony about 1865, according to Mr. H. A. Bryden; those in the Free State lived a few years longer, though Mr. Buckley's expedition in 1873 already found the animal "apparently unknown." At any rate, as a stuffed specimen was acquired by the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art as late as