CHAPTER IX. 



THE QUAGGA. 



{Equus quagga. Linnceus.) 



The quagga^ the last remaining species of the Equid^ 

 that I have to describe, is probably at the present time an 

 extinct animal, although within my own knowledge 

 specimens existed in the gardens of the Zoological Society, 

 and its hybrids, bred in the gardens, were driven about 

 London in a light tandem, which was employed to convey 

 vegetables from Covent Garden Market to the Eegent's 

 Park gardens. Before the foundation of the society, a pair 

 of imported quaggas were in the early part of the present 

 century driven about London in a phaeton by Mr. Sheriff 

 Parkins, and Lieut. -Col. C. Hamilton Smith, in his un- 

 published volume on the Equidae, 1841, states that he 

 drove one in a gig, and that its mouth was as delicate as 

 that of a horse ; he further stated that it had better 

 quarters and was more horse-like even than Burchell's 

 zebra, and added : ^' It is unquestionably the best calcu- 

 lated for domestication both as regards strength and 

 docility,' ' and he gives drawings taken by his own hands, 

 not only of a male and female quagga, but also of a hybrid 

 foal of a brood mare and quagga, which shows faint marks 

 of stripes. 



Half a century ago Captain W. Cornwallis Harris, in his 

 magnificent folio of the '' Wild Animals of Southern Africa,'^ 



