ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA 507 



applied by that author to the beast. Once more he deprecates its 

 being called an ass and says that the ears by which it is disfigured 

 might be cropped as is done in Germany with horses that have very 

 long ears. " And it has a horse-like head somewhat too long, as I 

 have seen here (quod hie vidi)." 



Father Tellez in a report to the Superior at Rome speaks of the 

 beauty of the animal, the equal width of the stripes, which seem to 

 form curves on the flank " as the picture will show you better than 

 any description could do." Ludolphus may have used this picture 

 for the illustration in his Commentarius reproduced by Mr Scherren 

 in the Field (March 4, 1905, p. 375). 



Though the animal in Ludolphus' plate differs in many important 

 respects from Grevy's zebra, there can, as Mr Scherren maintains, 

 be no doubt that it was intended for that species. Ludolphus lays 

 stress on three characteristics its great size, for in the Historia he 

 says that it was as big as a mule, its equine head, and its long 

 ears. The animal in the plate more nearly resembles a Grevy zebra 

 than does that figured by Pigafetta resemble any variety of the 

 Burchell zebra, for one of which it was undoubtedly meant. 



These Abyssinian zebras even reached Japan, for Ludolphus 

 learned from one Emmanuel Nawendorff, a native of Altenburg, 

 resident in Batavia, that King As-saghedus sent some to the Governor 

 of the Dutch East India Company at Batavia, who in his turn pre- 

 sented them to the Emperor of Japan. In return the emperor sent 

 10,000 silver taels and thirty Japanese dresses, so, as N'awendorff 

 says, they were amply paid for. One specimen at least had reached 

 Europe alive before the time when Ludolphus wrote, for a French 

 writer had seen the animal alive at Constantinople. He said that 

 among other gifts brought by the Abyssinian envoy to the Grand 

 Seigneur was an ass with a very beautiful skin, if indeed it were 

 natural. This however he declined to vouch for, not having examined 

 the animal, but he noted the more than ass-like size, the large head, 

 long ears, and the regularity of the stripes "of the breadth of a 

 finger," though he called the dark stripes chestnut-brown instead of 

 black. Tellez also thought that he detected a reddish tinge in 

 them. Ludolphus suggests that the discrepancy might be due to 

 the differences of age or perhaps to geographical distribution (vel 

 pro diversitate regionum di versos habeat colores). The Abyssinian 

 envoy had started with three zebras as gifts for the Sultan, but two 

 died on the way. These were flayed and the skins were presented 



