XX. A Communication of a singular Fact in Natural History. 
By the Right Honourable the Earl of Morton, F.R.S., tn @ 
Letter addressed to the President*. 
My DEaR Sir,—L YESTERDAY had an opportunity of observing 
a singular fact in natural history, which you may perhaps deem 
not unworthy of being communicated to the Royal Society. 
Some years ago, I was desirous of trying the experiment of 
domesticating the Quagga, and endeavoured to procure some 
individuals of that species. 1 obtained a male; but being dis- 
appointed of a female, I tried to breed from the male quagga 
and a yourg chesnut mare of seven-eighths Arabian blood, and 
which had never been bred from: the result was the production of 
a female hybrid, now five years old, and bearing, both in her form 
and in her colour, very decided indications of her mixed origin. 
t subsequently parted with the seven-eighths Arabian mare to 
Sir Gore Ouseley, who has bred from her by a very fine black 
Arabian horse. I yesterday morning examined the produce, 
namely, a two-years old filly, and a year-old colt. They have 
the character of the Arabian breed as decidedly as can be ex- 
pected, where fifteen-sixteenths of the blood are Arabian ; and 
they are fine specimens of that breed; but both in their colour, 
and in the hair of their manes, they have a striking resemblance 
to the quagga. Their colour is bay, marked more or less like 
the quagga in a darker tint. Both are distinguished by the dark 
line along the ridge of the back, the dark stripes across the fore- 
hand, and the dark bars across the back part of the legs. The 
stripes across the fore-hand of the colt are confined to the withers, 
and to the part of the neck next to them; those on the filly co- 
ver nearly the whole of the neck, and the back as far as the flanks, 
The colour of her coat on the neck adjoining to the mane is pale, 
and approaching to dun, rendering the stripes there more con- 
spicuous than those on the colt. The same pale tint appears in 
a less degree on the rump; and in this cireumstance of the dun 
tint also she resembles the quagga. 
_ The colt and filly were taken up from grass for my inspection, 
and, owing to the present state of their coats, I could not ascer- 
tain whether they bear any indications of the spots on the rump, 
the dark pasterns, or the narrow stripes on the forehead, with which 
the quagga is marked. They have no appearance of the dark 
line along the belly, or of the white tufts on the sides of the mane. 
Both their manes are black ; that of the filly is short, stiff, and 
stands upright, and Sir Gore Ouseley’s stud-groom alleged that 
it never was otherwise. ‘That of the colt is long, but so stiff as 
* From the Transactions of the Royal Society for 1821, Part I. 
Vol. 58. No, 280, Aug. 1821. O to 
