254 MOSTLY MAMMALS 



According to the best obtainable evidence the quagga 

 appears to have become extinct, in Cape Colony at any 

 rate,* about the year 1865, at which date a specimen 

 was actually living in the London Zoological Society's 

 menagerie ; while another had died there only the year 

 before. Of the latter example, a male, presented to the 

 Society in 1858 by the late Sir George Grey, the carcase 

 was fortunately acquired by the British Museum, where 

 both its skin and skeleton are now preserved. The former 

 specimen — a female purchased in 1 85 1 — survived till the 

 summer of 1872, when its carcase was sold (apparently 

 without the least idea of its priceless value) to a London 

 taxidermist, from whom the mounted skin was acquired 

 many years after by Mr. Walter Rothschild, for his museum 

 at Tring. Not impossibly, this specimen was actually the 

 last survivor of its kind, although, as already said, there 

 was not even a suspicion that it belonged to a rare species. 

 Most fortunately for natural history, a photograph of this 

 animal was taken in the summer of 1870 by Messrs. 

 York & Son, and it is from that picture that most of the 

 later figures of the animal appear to have been taken. It 

 is probably the only photograph of a living specimen in 

 existence. 



According to a note published by the Secretary, in the 

 Proceedings for 1891, the only other example of the quagga 

 in the London Zoological Society's menagerie was one 

 purchased in 183 1. No record of its death appears to 

 have been preserved, but it may have been the same 



* From the fact that a skin was purchased by the Edinburgh 

 Museum in 1879, Mr. G. Renshaw {Zoologist, February, 1901) has 

 suggested that the species may have survived in the Orange River 

 Colony till about that date ; but the Edinburgh specimen appears to 

 have been an old one at the date of its purchase. 



