Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/69

Rh 1879, we may perhaps compute that the animals in the Free State may have struggled on for about ten years longer at least than those in the Colony. Like the American Bison, the Quagga was so rapidly exterminated that its loss was never suspected until too late to prevent it; whilst the erroneous name "Quagga" (still employed by those who should know better), being conferred on both species of Zebra in South Africa, encouraged the belief that the true owners of the name had not been lost after all. Again and again one reads that "the rare animal the Quagga" has again turned up, but when the Sea-serpent has been captured one may believe in Quagga stories also; for all these cases, when investigated by competent persons, turn out to refer to Zebras. The true Quagga is gone for ever. Requiescat in pace!

When an animal becomes extinct, Science mournfully treasures up the records of its existence, and enumerates with dismal care the poor remnants of skin and bone (literally, skin and bone) that may exist, a poor exchange for the life of a fine species. The Great Auk has its historians; the Labrador Ducks, a silent nation, lie in stuffed stillness, redolent of naphthaline, in the drawers of a few known cabinets. Similarly I have thought it might be valuable to brother zoologists if I collected a list of all specimens, living and dead, which have represented Equus quagga, either alive in Zoological Gardens, or as prepared specimens in Zoological Museums.

After immense labour and correspondence, it appears that the following Quaggas have figured amongst the attractions of European menageries:—

(1) The Windsor Quagga, imported into England during the eighteenth century, and kept at Windsor as the property of the then Prince of Wales.

(2) The late Prof. Alphonse Milne-Edwards informed me, only a month before his lamented death, that the famous Jardin des Plantes at Paris had once possessed a Quagga, which lived to eighteen or twenty years of age in the menagerie. It was described by Cuvier in 1821.

(3, 4) A pair of Quaggas formed one of the varied attractions of the great Knowsley menagerie. On the death of Lord Derby in 1851 the menagerie was sold, and the female Quagga purchased for the Amsterdam Zoological Gardens. Some time afterwards