334 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



days that these horses were also spread over the Caspian steppes, but as it is 

 difficult to distinguish the different records about other Equidae, e. g., the 

 Kulan, it is impossble to confirm that opinion. 



The hillier steppe-country between the Wolga and the Ural-Mountains, 

 in the days of Pallas already crossed by a line of Kossak-posts, were roamed by 

 another wild horse. Pallas gives in his great travel-work, the well-drawn 

 portrait of a young filly, captured in the surroundings of Tozk then a little 

 Kossak post. That picture resembles in a high degree the Przevalski-fillies, 

 imported by Hagenbeck in 1899 and 1900. Together with the statements of 

 Pallas about the colour (Isabella to light bay), the "suberect" mane, the 

 tail, etc., there can be no doubt that these horses were almost as pure-bred 

 wild horses of the yellow-dun Przevalski-type as ever roamed the Dzungarian 

 Gobi. In the time of Pallas the wild horses were spread in scattered troops, 

 more or less intermingled with escaped domestic horses, over the steppes of 

 Western Siberia. Georgi, one of Pallas's fellow-workers, reports that they 

 were extirpated by a desolating horse-sickness in 1785 which destroyed also 

 the herds of the Kirghises and Kossaks, causing the death of about 85,000 

 horses. In 1876 the species was rediscovered by the great Russian explorer 

 Przevalski in the Dzungarian steppes south of Kobdo and named after him 

 by Poljakoff "Equus przevalskii." 



Quagga 



EQUUS QUAGGA Gmelin 



Equus quagga Gmelin, Linnaeus' Syst. Nat., eel. 13, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 213, 1788. 

 (South Africa.) 



FIGS.: G. Edwards, Gleanings of Natural History, p. 29, pi. 223 (col.), 1758; 

 Ridgeway, Proc. Zool. Soc. London 1909, pp. 563-586, text-figs. 157-180, 

 reproductions of early figures and photographs of preserved specimens. 



The vernacular name, Quagga, of this handsome zebralike species 

 is said to be derived from the Hottentot khoua khoua, in imitation 

 of its barklike cry. The Boers, however, often applied the same name 

 to the BurchelFs type of zebra, and it is sometimes loosely used for 

 that animal by writers. 



Harris, whose folio Portraits of the Game and Wild Animals of 

 Southern Africa, 1840, provides some first-hand information on this 

 species, wrote that it stands 4.5 feet at the withers and has a total 

 length of 8.5 feet, but Cuvier (quoted by W. L. Sclater, 1900, vol. 1, 

 p. 295) gives the height at the shoulder as slightly less, about 4 feet 

 1 inch. The general ground color of head, neck, and body was dark 

 rufous brown or bay, becoming gradually more fulvous and fading 

 off to white behind and beneath. The midline of the back was 

 marked by a broad dark stripe. Against the background of bay, the 

 forehead was marked with longitudinal stripes and the cheeks with 

 narrow transverse stripes of buff, "forming linear triangular figures 

 between the eyes and the mouth." Muzzle black; neck and anterior 

 half of the body banded and brindled with creamy brown, broader 

 and more regular on the neck (extending across the short erect 

 mane), but becoming finally lost in spots and blotches on the rear 



