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Show 428 MR. R. LYDEKKER ON THE SKULL [Mar. 15, skull in the British Museum, belonging to a specimen formerly living in the Zoological Society's Gardens, of which the mounted skin is exhibited in the public gallery. As shown in the accompanying text-figure (85), this skull likewise displays a very .'distinct vestige of the face-pit. Since this structure is thus shown to be present in the only two skulls of the Quagga which have hitherto come under m y notice, the presumption is that, if not a constant, it is certainly a very common feature of the species. Text-fig. 85. Skull of Quagga in the British Museum, showing vestige of depression for the face-gland. Apart from the interest attaching to the occurrence of this vestige of the Hipparion face-gland in a second existing species of the genus Equus, the feature in question has an important bearing on the suggested identification by Mr. Pocock* of the Bonte- Quagga t (E. burchelli) with E. quagga. I have examined all the skulls of E. burchelli in the Museum-and there are a good many -and in not one of them have I found any trace of a depression for the face-gland. And it would accordingly seem (so far, of course, as the available evidence goes) that the presence or absence of this feature forms a distinction between E. quagga and E. burchelli; and, I may add, a distinction which I think ought to be regarded as of specific value. In this connection I may mention that in the type-figure of the Quagga given in Edwards's ' Gleanings in Natural History,' as well as in the photograph by York of a living specimen in the Zoological Society's Gardens, and in the mounted skin in the British Museum, the pattern on the forehead forms a shorter and more regular diamond than in the Bonte-Quagga. Moreover, in the aforesaid three specimens of the former animal there are eight dark bars between the eyes, so that the centre of the diamond is light. In the Amsterdam Quagga there are ten. On the other hand, in all the specimens of the Bonte-Quagga that I have seen * Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 7, vol. x. p. 306 (1902). t I think this name, which is used by Cornwallis Harris, is far preferable to " Burchell's Zebra." |