402 KLOOF AND KARROO. 



melancholy interest. That an animal so beautiful, so 

 capable of domestication and of use, and to be found 

 not long since in so great abundance, should have 

 been allowed to be swept from the face of the earth, 

 is surely a disgrace to our latter-day civilisation. 

 No human effort can now recall this magnificent 

 form- — it is gone for ever, after an existence of untold 

 thousands of years upon its spacious plains. One 

 can only hope that the African elephant, the eland, 

 and other useful creatures now fast disappearing, 

 will not be suffered to vanish thus miserably. 



I find that the true quagga has not often figured 

 in the collection of the Zoological Society. There 

 appear to have been but two specimens shown there : 

 one, a female, purchased in 185 1 ; the other, a male, 

 presented by Sir George Grey (then Governor of 

 the Cape) in 1858. These specimens have, of course, 

 long since disappeared. 



I do not remember to have seen a stuffed 

 specimen of the quagga in the Natural History 

 Museum at South Kensington, although I believe 

 a skin or skins formerly existed in the British 

 Museum. 



The name quagga is obviously a corruption of 

 the Hottentot name for this animal, " quacha," 

 derived from the animal's call or neigh. Pringle, 

 the bard of South Africa, recalls this peculiar neigh 

 in his poem " Afar in the Desert " : 



And the timorous quagga's wild whistling neigh 

 Is heard at the fountain at break of day. 



Old hunters and colonists have described to me 

 the curious single-file march of this animal when 

 moving about its native plains, and the squadron- 



