Burchell's Zebra 70 



of Sir William Flower's little volume on The Horse, extended well up to 

 the shoulder, fading away about the centre of the barrel. 



H. A. Bryden. 



Burchell's Zebra {Equus burchelli typicus) 

 Quacha or Bonk- Quacha of the Boers ; Peetsi or Peetsi Tolatsan 



OF THE BECHUANAS 



Although one or other of the sub-specific forms into which this beautiful 

 species has lately been separated by British and German naturalists may 

 still be found to-day in almost every portion of the African continent 

 between Zululand in the south, and Lake Rudolph in the north, the type 

 form of this animal originally discovered by Dr. Burchell in the country 

 immediately to the north of the Orange River appears to be as extinct to- 

 day as its congener the true quagga, whose range having been confined to 

 the plains of the Cape Colony and portions of the territory now known as 

 the Orange Free State, was the first animal in South Africa, after the 

 blaauwbok, to be absolutely exterminated at the hands of advancing 

 civilisation. 



The various sub-species into which Burchell's zebra has lately been 

 divided differ one from another not structurally, but in the variations of 

 the striping of their coats, which are probably due to local influences not 

 yet thoroughly understood. Like all the large mammals inhabiting 

 Southern Africa to-day, Burchell's zebras must have spread through the 

 continent from the north, and they appear to have attained their maximum 

 of striping in the well-watered, forest-clad portions of Central and Eastern 

 Africa, and to have become gradually less richly marked as they extended 

 southwards and westwards into countries where the forests grew scarcer 

 and the climate dryer, culminating in the poorly striped quagga of the 

 Cape Colony, which appears to me to be the extreme southerly form of 



