NO HYBRIDS IN NATURE 



is, however, a supposition which every naturalist 

 knows to be quite out of the bounds of remotest 

 probabiHty. It is a fact that " mules " or 

 hybrids never are produced by animals living 

 in their natural conditions, except in a few rare 

 cases among aquatic animals whose eggs are 

 fertilized in the water after they have been laid. 



Fig. 117. — Photograph of the two " bandoliers " cut from the 

 striped part of the skin of an Okapi,which, when sent home 

 by Sir Harry Johnston, were at first thought to have been 

 cut from the skin of a new kind of zebra. 



And no one has ever produced, even in cap- 

 tivity, a hybrid between any creatures so 

 unlike each other as a double- hoofed and a 

 single-hoofed mammal. 



There are a good many instances in which 

 small living animals were represented in the 

 past by gigantic forms very close in structure 

 to the httle Uving beasts, but of much greater 



165 



