!46 THE QUAGGA 



E. hurchelli seloasi, have been proposed for what are at most 

 local races. But it is at present far from certain whetlier their 

 distribution favours this subdivision. 



The Quagga was more striped than is sometimes represented in 

 illustrations. According to Dr. Noack, from whose paper -^ upon 

 the animal I quote here, the transverse stripes reached back as far 

 as the buttocks ; they were, however, completely absent from the 

 legs. The animal is, as every one knows, probably completely 

 extinct. In the year 1836 it was still abundant; in 1864 the 

 last specimen ever exhiliited was received Ijy the Zoological 

 Siiciety. Air. W. L. Sclater thinks that it may have survived in 

 the Orange Eiver Colony as late as 1878, but admits that any 

 certainty is difficult, as it was frequently confounded by the Boers 

 with Burchell's Zebra. Its rarity is emphasised by the fact that 

 it is not mentioned in the recent work of that most skilful of 

 hunters, Air. F. Selous. Gaudry places the (.^uagga nearest of all 

 living Equidae to the Hipparlon i/racile of Pikermi. 



Fossil Equidae. — The existing Equidae all belong to the 

 genus Equus, though there are some who would (quite unnecessarily) 

 divide off the Zebras as a genus Hippot'ujris. The genus Equus 

 itself goes back in time to the Pliocene, during which epoch there 

 lived in India E. slvulensis, the same species according to some 

 with the E. stenonis of Emrope. Xone of these species, Old World 

 or Xew, are easily to be separated from E. caballus. But many 

 names have been given to them. It is of course perfectly con- 

 ceivable that they may have differed among themselves as much 

 as do the existing Zebras and Asses, the separation of which would 

 be hardly possible did we know their bones only. There are, 

 however, extinct genera, undouljtedly related so closely to Equus 

 as to be placed in the same family, though clearly separable as 

 genera. Hiiiparion is one of these genera ; its remains are known 

 from Europe, Asia, and North Africa, from beds of iliocene and 

 Pliocene times. A large number of different species have been 

 described. It was a beast of about the size of a Zebra. The 

 principal characters are that each foot has three toes, of wliich, 

 however, the two side ones are smaller than the central toe. 

 There is a marked round fossa on the maxillary bone, a feature 

 shared by the South American Onohippidimn^ The pattern of 



' "Das Quagga," Zoal. Garten, 1893, p. 289. 



' Of this Horse, remains have been lately discovered (see Lonnberg, Proc. Zool. 



