THE TRUE QUAGGA 185 



sessed a quagga, but I have no information about 

 the animal. 



14, 15, 1 6. " Several " quaggas apparently the 

 last of their race to be sent alive to Europe were 

 obtained about 1870 by Mr. Bols, the Belgian 

 consul at Port Elizabeth, and forwarded to the 

 Antwerp Zoo : about the same time a very fine 

 individual, which had lived several years at Ant- 

 werp, was purchased by Dr. Westerman for 

 the Amsterdam Gardens. Had the impending 

 extermination of the species been realised at the 

 time, a last effort might have been made to save 

 the race by breeding from the Antwerp animals, 

 and so founding a menagerie stock : the wild 

 quaggas then left in Africa were already in a 

 parlous state, and probably all but exterminated. 

 This last opportunity, however, was unwittingly 

 lost : indeed I find that these animals have never 

 bred anywhere in captivity, and the last of the 

 imported specimens will by now have died from 

 sheer old age. 1 It was probably the fine Amster- 

 dam specimen of 1870 which, on its death, passed 

 as a " duplicate specimen from a Continental 

 Museum " into the hands of Heer Franks him- 

 self resident in Amsterdam. The Dutch Zoo- 

 logical Society already possessed another stuffed 



i This importation of 1870 is here emphasised, as I have seen it 

 stated in a recent work by a well known naturalist that in 1864 the 

 last specimen ever exhibited was received by the Zoological Society. 

 1864, however, was the year in which the skin and skeleton of the 

 quagga of 1831 was purchased for the British Museum. 



