THE TRUE QUAGGA 189 



shows the stout nasal bones and squarish diastema 

 which occur in the true quagga and thus differ- 

 entiate it from the elongated nasals and oblong 

 diastema seen in the skull of Burchell's zebra, 

 the only species with which it is likely to be 

 confounded. 1 Unfortunately no history is obtain- 

 able, though the Medical Museum collection 

 appears to have been founded by the union of 

 specimens from the old Manchester Natural 

 History Society's Museum with others formerly 

 kept at the Pine Street Medical School, near the 

 Manchester Infirmary. Horns of other African 

 animals Cape hartebeest, blesbok, etc. in the 

 same series, as far as they go, seem to support 

 the authenticity of this skeleton : but all further 

 inquiry appears useless owing to the death in 

 1885 of Professor Morison Watson, M.D., F.R.S., 

 in whose time the collection of the Medical 

 Museum was arranged in its present situation. 



8. The late Professor Cope formerly possessed 

 a roughly-cleaned quagga skeleton, which he pre- 



1 A few years ago I devoted some time in endeavouring to separate 

 Equus quagga and E. burchellii by their osteological characters. 

 The diastema or space between the canine and molar teeth (through 

 which horse drivers insert the bit) is, when the jaws are closed, 

 squarish in the quagga and oblong in burchellii. In the quagga the 

 aperture of the posterior nares is wider and also more rounded than in 

 Burchell's zebra, as seen in a photograph now before me showing the 

 two skulls placed side by side. The three quagga skulls in London, 

 together with that of the male specimen at Leyden, were examined in 

 connection with this research. Naturalists of course have long been 

 aware of the interest which attaches to the skeleton of the quagga, 

 the nearest of all recent equines to the extinct Pliocene horses 

 Equus quaggoides and E. stenonis of Europe. 



