the Cape Colony Qaaggas. 325 



with Edwards^s and Lorenz's Quag2:as by supposing that the 

 original blackish-brown stripes all over the neck and body 

 have faded to a brownish fawn, while the fawn intervals between 

 the stripes have bleached to [creamy] white on the neck and 

 retained their original colour approximately upon the rump, 

 where the pigment of the interspaces was less susceptible to 

 the action of light than upon the neck. I cannot find any 

 reasons in favour of this explanation if the a priori assump- 

 tion that all quaggas were originally coloured alike or nearly 

 so be put on one side. There are, on the contrary, certain 

 known facts so strongly opposed to it as to render its accept- 

 ance impossible without further evidence. In the first place, 

 photographs may be trusted in matters of this kind ; hence it 

 is perfectly safe to maintain that if the living quagga photo- 

 graphed by York had been coloured like the specimen figured 

 by Edwards, the dark stripes and paler interspaces upon the 

 body and rump would have been shown exactly as they are 

 shown upon the head, neck, and withers (see P. Z. S. 1901, 

 i. p. 166). Surely this photograph proves conclusively that 

 the specimen portrayed was not striped upon the barrel of the 

 body and rump like the one depicted inEdwards^s ' Gleanings,' 

 but that these regions were at most indistinctly and confusedly 

 banded, exactly like the specimens in the Amsterdam and 

 British Museums. This conclusion is, I think, inescapable. 

 Hence it follows that the difference in coloration between the 

 neck and the body of the stuffed specimens mentioned above 

 is not attributable to inequality in the fading of the two 

 areas. It is, of course, probable that the skins in question 

 have faded to a certain extent — to what extent we probably 

 never shall know. So far as my memory serves, the Am- 

 sterdam specimen is of very much the same general tint as 

 the specimen in the British Museum ; yet the former died in 

 1883, and has presumably been exhibited for twenty years, 

 whilst the latter died in 1864, and has probably been exhibited 

 for forty years. Now the quagga of Edwards's ' Gleanings ' 

 with black stripes and bright bay interspaces very closely 

 resembled in the matter of blackness of stripes a typical 

 Burchell's Quagga or Wabl berg's race of that animal, and, 

 without any evidence pointing the other way, it may be 

 justifiably assumed that the pigment of the quagga described 

 by Edwards was of the same nature — that is to say, as stable 

 under the action of light — as the pigment of the skin of the 

 type of E. Wahlbergi. The latter was received at the British 

 Museum in 1846, and has presumably been exhibited for 

 nearly sixty years. It is faded beyond doubt, but the fading 

 has progressed uniformly all over the body, and, in spite of 



