BONTE-QUAGGA 3 



In 191 1, Mr. R. B. Woosnam, Game Warden of the East African 

 Protectorate, sent home a photograph of the skin of a Grant's bonte- 

 quagga in which a saddle-shaped patch on the hind part of the back is 

 devoid of stripes. This unstriped area is situated just where the 

 longitudinal stripes of the hind-quarters pass into the transverse stripes 

 of the back, and occupies about half the interval between that point 

 and the withers. The dorsal stripes are continued through it, and 

 below it the belly-stripes have the normal development. In colour the 

 pale unstriped area is dirty white. The animal, which is adult, was 

 killed near Nakuru, and a few days later a second, but half-grown 

 individual with a similar uniformly coloured area, was shot in the same 

 place. Mr. Woosnam states that the natives are well acquainted 

 with such abnormally coloured zebras, of which for many years there 

 have been one or two among the herds, but never more. In Nature, 

 vol. Ixxxvi. p. 241, 1 90 1, Professor Ridgeway proposed the name E. 

 burchelli goldfiticJd for these zebras which are, however, nothing more 

 than abnormalities. 



On page 97 of vol. xxiii. of the Memoirs of the Linnean Society of 

 Normandy, 19 10, Messrs. Brasil and Pennetier described a bonte- 

 quagga as E. burchelli pococki. The specimen on which this determina- 

 tion is based is a stallion in the natural history museum at Rouen, 

 obtained in 1882 from the menagerie of one Pezon. Nothing is known 

 of its previous history, although from the type of marking it may be 

 considered certain that it came from southern Africa. In the almost 

 complete absence of barring on the limbs it agrees with the typical E. 

 burchelli, but the shoulders and quarters are completely striped, and 

 the body-stripes are continued downwards to join the longitudinal 

 ventral stripe. In the latter respect the race resembles the Zulu E. b. 

 wahlbergi, in which the legs are barred to some distance below the 

 knees and hocks. The ground-colour of the coat is cream instead of 

 white, as in the typical burchelli. Its describers consider that E. b. 

 pococki is extinct, and to a considerable extent intermediate between 

 E. b. typicus on the one hand and E. b. chapviani and E. b. zvahlbergi 

 on the other. 



In the Field for 1909, vol. cxiv. p. 889, Mr. Pocock has given 

 reasons for considering the so-called Ward's zebra {supra, p. 65) as a 

 hybrid, born in Messrs. Barnum and Bailie's Menagerie, between the 

 typical zebra and Chapman's bonte-quagga. This so-called species, to 

 which Professor Ridgway inadvertently gave the technical name of E. 

 ivardi \\\ the Proceedings of the Zoological Society for 1909, p. 798, 

 must accordingly disappear. 



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