178 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



year, but little respite being given to the un- 

 fortunate animals, who were massacred both in 

 season and out of season without any close time 

 being afforded them/ According to Mr. H. A. 

 Bryden the last two quaggas of the Great Karroo 

 were shot in 1865, near the Tigerberg Mountain : 

 and the once teeming myriads of the Orange 

 River Colony only held out a few years longer, 

 for when the late Mr. T. E. Buckley passed 

 through their haunts in 1873, ^^^ ^^^^ ^.^^SS^^ 

 had already become " apparently unknown." 

 According to Mr. Layard, however, dilapidated 

 quagga skins, unfit for stuffing, were still obtainable 

 in Capetown as late as 1875:^ but by 1879, at latest, 

 the true quagga had become quite extinct, and had 

 gone to join the blaauwbok and the northern 

 seacow in the melancholy list of departed species. \ 

 So rapidly indeed was the true quagga extermi- 

 nated that naturalists seem to have been utterly 

 unaware of its impending fate till it was too late 

 to try to save it : the Burchell zebra or bonte 

 quagga also being called "quagga" in South 

 Africa for the sake of brevity, has led some 



1 Wasteful though they were of animal life, these tough old souls 

 are said to have been quaintly economical of powder and lead, care- 

 fully cutting the bullets out of their slain quarry to serve again. 



2 I have been informed that in this year some " half -striped " 

 quaggas were still surviving — the last of their race — on a farm in the 

 Hanover district of Cape Colony. A special inquiry which I made 

 in 1900 — greatly facilitated by the extreme courtesy and kindness of 

 the Commissioner of Hanover — showed that neither in Hanover nor 

 in Cradock can the true quagga noiv be found. 



