OHAPTEE IX. 



THE QUAGGA. 



(^Equiis quagga. Linnceus.) 



The quagga, the last remaming species of the Bquida& 

 that I have to describe, is probably at the present time an 

 extinct animal, although within my own knowledge- 

 specimens existed in the gardens of the Zoological Society,, 

 and its hybrids, bred in the gardens, were driven about 

 London in a light tandem, which was employed to convey 

 vegetables from Covent Garden Market to the Regent's 

 Park gardens. Before the foundation of the society, a pair 

 of imported quaggas were in the early part of the present 

 century driven about London in a phaeton by Mr. Sheriff 

 Parkins, and Lieut.-Col. 0. Hamilton Smith, in his un» 

 published volume on the Bquidae, 1841, states that he 

 drove one in a gig, and that its mouth was as delicate as 

 that of a horse ; he further stated that it had better- 

 quarters and was more horse-like even . than Burchell's 

 zebra, and added : " It is unquestionably the best calcu- 

 lated for domestication both as regards strength and 

 docility," and he gives drawings taken by his own hands,, 

 not only of a male and female quagga, but also of a hybrid 

 foal of a brood mare and quagga, which shows faint marks 

 of stripes. 



- Half a century ago Captain W. Cornwallis Harris, in his- 

 magnificent folio of the " Wild Animals of Southern Africa,"' 



