E. burchelli selousi, have been proposed for what are at most local races. But it is at present far from certain whether their distribution favours this subdivision.
The Quagga was more striped than is sometimes represented in illustrations. According to Dr. Noack, from whose paper[1] 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 exhibited was received by the Zoological Society. Mr. W. L. Sclater thinks that it may have survived in the Orange River 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, Mr. F. Selous. Gaudry places the Quagga nearest of all living Equidae to the Hipparion gracile 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 Hippotigris. The genus Equus itself goes back in time to the Pliocene, during which epoch there lived in India E. sivalensis, the same species according to some with the E. stenonis of Europe. None of these species, Old World or New, are easily to be separated from E. caballus. But many names have been given to them. It is of course perfectly conceivable 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, undoubtedly related so closely to Equus as to be placed in the same family, though clearly separable as genera. Hipparion is one of these genera; its remains are known from Europe, Asia, and North Africa, from beds of Miocene 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 which, 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 Onohippidium.[2] The pattern of
- ↑ "Das Quagga," Zool. Garten, 1893, p. 289.
- ↑ Of this Horse, remains have been lately discovered (see Lönnberg, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1900, p. 379) in the cave which produced the remains of Glossotherium. A piece of skin covered with Fox-red hair, possibly spotted with paler areas, is believed to be a relic of Onohippidium.
