ZEBRAS AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS 179 



out this fact, and giving information as to the habits 

 and habitat of this interesting species. This has 

 often been cited since. The quagga's habitat was, 

 stated briefly, the Cape Colony, the Orange Free 

 State, and part of Griqualand West. It seldom 

 wandered north of the Yaal river, and its curiously 

 restricted range is only another of those puzzles of 

 geographical distribution which have so long per- 

 plexed naturalists. In 1837 Cornwallis Harris 

 found the quagga inhabiting the plains south of the 

 Vaal river in immense herds. The Boers of the 

 northern portion of Cape Colony and of the Orange 

 Free State have since that time so utterly exter- 

 minated the species — merely for the sake of obtain- 

 ing a few miserable shillings for each skin — that not 

 a single specimen now remains. The quagga is 

 completely extinct, and has been for more than 

 twenty years past. It is a thousand pities. You 

 may destroy, but you can never again restore a species 

 such as this. 



No hunter will ever again see this unique and 

 striking quadruped thunder in dense battalions and 

 amid clouds of dust across the vast plains and karroos 

 of Southern Africa. Never again will the traveller 

 view its strange single-file march silhouetted against 

 the distant sky-line. The quagga, that for many a 

 thousand years decorated those primeval wilds and 

 untrodden deserts, has clean vanished, never to return 



