THE EXTINCT QUAGGA 
Wuen the Dutch first colonised that part of Africa of 
which Cape Town now forms the capital, they found the 
country absolutely swarming with a great variety of species 
of large game and other animals, whose form and appear- 
ance were for the most part unfamiliar. As they them- 
selves came from a land which had long since been stripped 
of the larger members of its fauna, it is possible that 
unfamiliarity with these prototypes was one of the causes 
which led to the indiscriminate and often inappropriate 
bestowal of the names of the large mammals of Europe, 
or compounds of the same, on the animals of the new 
country. What, for instance, can be more inappropriate 
than the transference of the Dutch name for elk (eland) 
to the largest of the Cape antelopes—unless, indeed (which 
is scarcely likely), the settlers were acquainted with the 
fact that etymologically the word signifies, in its Greek 
original, “strength” ? Neither is hartebeest (stag-ox) much 
better, although wildebeest (wild ox) is by no means an 
unsuitable designation for the animals known to the 
Hottentots by the title of gnu. Bastard hartebeest, on 
the other hand, is a cumbrous and senseless name for the 
antelope the Bechuanas call tsessabe, and it is much to 
be regretted that the Boers did not see fit to adopt for 
South African animals the native titles they found ready 
to hand. 
252 
