254 MOSTLY MAMMALS 
According ‘to the best obtainable evidence the quagga 
appears to have become extinct, in Cape Colony at any 
rate,* about the year 1865, at which date a specimen 
was actually living in the London Zoological Society’s 
menagerie ; while another had died there only the year 
before. Of the latter example, a male, presented to the 
Society in 1858 by the late Sir George Grey, the carcase 
was fortunately acquired by the British Museum, where 
both its skin and skeleton are now preserved. The former 
specimen—a female purchased in 1851—survived till the 
summer of 1872, when its carcase was sold (apparently 
without the least idea of its priceless value) to a London 
taxidermist, from whom the mounted skin was acquired 
many years after by Mr. Walter Rothschild, for his museum 
at Tring. Not impossibly, this specimen was actually the 
last survivor of its kind, although, as already said, there 
was not even a suspicion that it belonged to a rare species. 
Most fortunately for natural history, a photograph of this 
animal was taken in the summer of 1870 by Messrs. 
York & Son, and it is from that picture that most of the 
later figures of the animal appear to have been taken. It 
is probably the only photograph of a living specimen in 
existence. 
According to a note published by the Secretary, in the 
Proceedings for 1891, the only other example of the quagga 
in the London Zoological Society’s menagerie was one 
purchased in 1831. No record of its death appears to 
have been preserved, but it may have been the same 
* From the fact that a skin was purchased by the Edinburgh 
Museum in 1879, Mr. G. Renshaw (Zoologist, February, 1901) has 
suggested that the species may have survived in the Orange River 
Colony till about that date ; but the Edinburgh specimen appears to 
have been an old one at the date of its purchase. 
