1909.] BURCHELL'S AND WAHLBERG'S QUAGGAS. 417 
from a specimen from Zululand in the British Museum. It is not 
exactly like the type, but is near enough to leave little doubt as 
to their subspecific identity. It differs from Burchell’s Quagga in 
being striped, though sparsely, on the outsides of the legs and on 
the hind-quarters up to the root of the tail, and in the extension 
of the body-stripes to the median ventral line. The stripes are 
all rather thin, and are especially thin and faint on the area below 
a line joining the stifle-joint and the root of the tail. On the 
lower half of the thigh, on the left side, they form a more or less 
reticulated pattern, as has been already recorded in the case of 
the example of this race in Mr. Rothschild’s Museum.at Tring *. 
On the thigh of the right side the stripes form no such reticu- 
lation. Shadow-stripes are well developed and extend as far as 
the withers, as in the typical specimen. There are indications of 
them also on the neck. Since Zululand is known to have been 
the home of Wahlberg’s Quagga, there is no reason to doubt that 
the specimen under discussion came from that country. 
“Tn connection with these photographs attention may be drawn 
to a point connected with the pattern of these and more northern 
races of Quaggas, which I believe has a procryptic significance not 
previously noticed. This is the sharp division of the body by the 
direction of its stripes into an anterior and a posterior half. On 
the shoulders and fore part of the body the stripes are vertical ; 
but on the hinder half of the body and quarters they abruptly take 
an oblique direction backwards. The optical effect this change of 
direction in the stripes has upon me is that of two distinct objects 
in the line of vision instead of one; each object is in itself in- 
complete, and the resemblance of the two combined to the body 
of an animal shaped like a uniformly-coloured horse tends to be 
destroyed. This obliteration of the horse-like form is still further 
effected by the nature of the stripes on the posterior half of the 
neck, which are not only broader than those on the withers and 
shoulders, but when the neck is carried in its usual position, incline 
at a different angle from them. Coming finally to the head, it is 
noticeable that there is a further change in the stripes, which 
are not only narrow but vary in direction, the direction being 
to a great extent different from that of the neck-stripes. As 
for the legs, they are either unstriped in Quaggas or striped in 
a direction parallel to the long axis of the body. Thus setting 
aside the legs, a Quagga of the type above discussed, of which any 
one of the subspecies would do as an example, is broken up by the 
size and direction of its stripes into four distinct blocks or areas, 
namely, the head, the neck, the shoulders and fore part of the 
body, the hinder part of the body and the hind-quarters. The 
optical disruption of the equine form caused by the continuity of 
narrowly striped and broadly striped areas depends upon the fact 
that the broadly striped areas appear to be nearer the observer 
than the narrowly striped areas. They seem to be two objects 
* Pocock, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. (6) xx. p. 45, 1897. 
