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. 1 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, tne true quaggas 

 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 : 2 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 now be found. 



