MARCH 93 



families must be considered as absurd as an illustration 

 of an ostrich soaring in mid-air or a swallow swimming 

 across a stream. Divers and grebes do not sit up on 

 end like auks, not from any prejudice on their part for 

 a horizontal attitude, but because they cannot. When 

 the ancient affinity of birds and reptiles is remembered, 

 the importance of representing each in their true atti- 

 tudes will be recognised as important. 



XXV 



To mention big game in these days is to waken melan- 

 choly reflections. Mr. H. A. Bryden has 



Alas! for 



lately harrowed our feelings by describing 



the extinction of some beautiful races and 

 foretelling the speedy extermination of others. 1 For 

 instance, of the four species of zebra, the quagga was 

 the most powerful and horse-like. Half a century 

 ago it roamed the plains of Cape Colony, the Orange 

 Free State, and part of Griqualand in countless 

 thousands. It is now extinct, and the only memorial 

 of it in this country is a single battered skin in the 

 Natural History Museum at South Kensington. 



' Never again will the traveller view its strange single-file 

 march silhouetted against the distant sky-line. The quagga, 

 that for many a thousand years decorated these primeval 

 wilds and untrodden deserts, has clean vanished, never to 

 return recklessly destroyed by the short-sighted policy of 

 the skin-hunting Boers of the last generation.' 



1 Nature and Sport in South Africa. By H. A. Bryden. Chapman 

 and Hall. 



