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Show 32 DR. L. V. LORENZ ON THE [Jan. 14, 3. On the Specimen of the Quagga in the Imperial Museum of Natural History, Vienna. By LUDWIG v. LORENZ, C.M.Z.S. [Received November 25, 1901.] (Text-figure 7.) In the Zoological collection of our Museum there is a striped Equus named " Equus quagga" and until recently I have always thought it was a Quagga of typical features, though the published figures of that now extinct animal are rather different. But when I visited the museums of Munich, Tring, London, Paris, and Berlin last year, I discovered that the Quaggas which I saw there were not quite in accordance with the specimen at Vienna. I noticed them to be in general of somewhat different coloration- more greyish or chocolate-brown on the upper parts, to have narrower and perhaps more numerous dark stripes separated by comparatively broader light interspaces, and, moreover, they all appeared to be of a smaller size. When I returned to Vienna I asked my friend Marktanner (of the Museum in Graz) to photograph our Quagga, and I had intended to send copies of the photograph to different museums and to get others of the Quaggas there in exchange. But different circumstances prevented me from following the matter up until October last, when I had the pleasure of receiving a visit from Dr. P. L. Sclater; and one of his first questions was, what I thought about our Quagga, as it seemed to him not quite identical with other specimens of this Equus known to him. It was a great satisfaction to me that such an authority as Dr. Sclater had come to the same conclusion as I had done, and I am following his invitation in offering to the Zoological Society of London an exact description of our Quagga accompanied by one of the before-mentioned photographs. Before writing this I examined the following figures of the Quagga, which I propose to refer to as I proceed with m y description:- Fig. I.-Buffon's and Shaw's copies of Edwards's plate (Gleanings of Nat. Hist. i. pis. 222 & 223) \ though this figure seems to me to represent rather Equus burchelli. Fig. II.-Buffon's and Schreber's copies of Allamand's young Quagga. (Allamand's edition of Buffon, Supplement, v. pi. vi.) Fig. III.-Geoffroy St.-Hilaire and Cuvier's plate (Hist. Nat. Mammif. pi. 320), also reproduced by Schinz (Saugethiere, "Equus" pi. v.). Fig. IV.-Schreber's plate (vol. vi. pi. 3 1 7 A), representing the Quagga of Munich acquired by Ecklon about 1835. 1 Taken from the type of Equus quagga. |
