THE ZEBU A. 71 



long kept in the royal menagerie, in France, was ex- 

 ceedingly wild at its arrival, and was never com- 

 pletely tamed. He was, indeed, broken for the sad- 

 dle, but his imtractableness rendered great precau- 

 tion necessary ; and two men were obliged to hold 

 the bridle while another was riding him. Some sup- 

 pose, that if this animal were completely domesti- 

 cated, and a tame breed produced, it might then be 

 brought under the same management as the horse. 

 A beautiful male zebra, at Exeter-change, London, 

 which was afterwards burnt to death, by the mischie- 

 vous act of a monkey setting lire to the straw on 

 which he lay, appeared to have entirely lost his na- 

 tive wildness, and was so gentle as to suffer a child 

 of six years old to sit quietly on his back, without 

 exhibiting the least sign of displeasure. He was fa- 

 miliar .even with strangers, and received those kind 

 of caresses, that are usually given to the horse, with 

 evident satisfaction. The one, however, that was 

 some years ago, kept at Kevv, seemed .of a savage and 

 fierce nature. jVo one dared venture to approach it 

 except the person who was accustomed to feed it. 

 For, whatever speculation may imagine,, experience 

 shews this animal to be of a very ditiercnt disposition 

 from both the wild horse and the wild ass. Both 

 these, r when once taken, are easily tamed, and be- 

 come tractable, which has never yet been the case 

 with the zebra. 



This animal has, by many naturalists, been erro- 

 neously confounded with the wild ass. There ex- 

 ists, indeed, an elegant breed of wild asses in some 

 parts of the Levant, and in the northern countries of 

 Africa, which is much more beautiful than the com- 

 mon ass, and which, like the finest breed of horses, 

 originated from Arabia. But the zebra is a very dif- 

 ferent animal from these, and inhabits a diilerent 

 climate. It exists neither in Europe, Asia, nor Ame- 

 rica, nor even in the northern parrs of Africa, and is 

 only found in the southern regions of the last-men- 

 tioned quarter of the globe, from Abyssinia to ths 

 Cape of Good Hope, and from Mosambique to Congo. 



