428 



MR. R. LYDEKKER ON THE SKULL 



[Mar. 15, 



skull in the British Museum, belonging to a specimen formerly 

 living in the Zoological Society's Gardens, of which the mounted 

 skin is exhibited in the public gallery. As shown in the accom- 

 panying text-figure (85), this skull likewise displays a very distinct 

 vestige of the face-pit. Since this structure is thus shown to be 

 present in the only two skulls of the Quagga which have hitherto 

 come under my notice, the presumption is that, if not a constant, 

 it is certainly a very common feature of the species. 



Text-fia-. 85. 



Skull of Quagga in the British Museum, showing vestige of depression 

 for the face-gland. 



Apart from the interest attaching to the occurrence of this 

 vestige of the Hipparion face-gland in a second existing species of 

 the genus Equus, the feature in question has an important bearing 

 on the suggested identification by Mr. Pocock* of the Bonte- 

 Quagga t {E. hurchelli) with E. quagga. I have examined all the 

 skulls of E. hurchelli in the Mviseum — and there are a good many 

 — and in not one of them have I fovtnd any trace of a depression 

 for the face-gland. And it would accordingly seem (so far, of 

 course, as the available evidence goes) that the presence or absence 

 of this feature forms a distinction between E. q%(,agga and 

 E. hurchelli ; and, I may add, a distinction which I think ought 

 to be regarded as of specific value. 



In this connection I may mention that in the type-figure of the 

 Quagga given in Edwards's ' Gleanings in Natural History,' as 

 well as in the photograph by York of a living specimen in the 

 Zoological Society's Gardens, and in the mounted skin in the 

 British Museum, the pattern on the forehead forms a shorter and 

 more regular diamond than in the Bonte-Quagga. Moreover, in 

 the aforesaid three specimens of the former animal there are eight 

 dark bars between the eyes, so that the centre of the diamond is 

 light. In the Amstei-dam Quagga there are ten. On the other 

 hand, in all the specimens of the Bonte-Quagga that I have seen 



* Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 7, vol. x. p. 306 (1902). 



t I think this name, which is used bj^ Cornwallis Harris, is far preferable to 

 " Burchell's Zebra." 



