THE KING OF PORTUGAL AND THE POPE

freak, but one straight horn. The rhinoceros has been seen in Europe and even in England long before the opening of the Zoological Society's gardens. The animal which was sketched by Albert Dürer was sent over in the year 1313 to the King of Portugal. It proved so intractable, or the Portuguese king appreciated it so little, that he sent it as a present to the Pope! The head of the Church, however, was relieved from the anxiety attendant on the housing of so "fearful a wildfowl" by the actions of the rhinoceros itself, who, "in an access of fury sunk the vessel on its passage." In the year 1684 old John Evelyn "went with Sir William Godolphin to see the rhinoceros or unicorn, being the first, I suppose, that was ever brought to England. She belonged to some East India merchants, and was sold (as I remember) for above £2,000." The price of rhinoceroses did not diminish very greatly after the expiration of a century and a half. For the first specimen acquired by the Zoological Society, in 1834, cost no less than £1,050. Still later, in 1875, even more was given for a rhinoceros. The original specimen of a reputed new species, not now allowed as a species, viz., Rh. lasiotis, cost no less than £1,250. This animal from Assam was sent for specially, and only died the other day. Its remains repose in the Natural History Museum. The Gardens are never without more than one rhinoceros nowadays. A large Indian rhinoceros (Rh. indicus) was once the object of an interesting experiment in medicine. It appeared to suffer from simply a stomach-ache. The late Mr. Bartlett, daringly experimentalizing, offered it eighty drops of croton oil on a bun. The beast swallowed the dose, enough to kill ever so many men, and-recovered.

QUEEN VICTORIA'S GIFTS

GREVY'S ZEBRA

This splendid zebra, the very culmination of zebras, is one of the most striking exhibits in the Regent's Park. It is, too, one of the chief novelties which recent events have enabled the society to add to their menagerie. So lately as 1899 the first two examples were procured through her late Majesty Queen Victoria, who received them as a gift from the Emperor Menelik of Abyssinia. With her customary liberality, the Queen placed these horses in the Zoological Gardens for exhibition to the public. The zebra had, however, been known to us before that date. In 1882 the first specimen now in Europe was sent by the same Emperor to M. Grévy, late President of the French Republic, and the beast was described as new to science by the late Alphonse MilneEdwards. It seems, however, that the fellow explorer with Speke, Colonel Grant, had seen and preserved an example of the same zebra so long ago as 1860; but he only described it later, in fact not until 1883. So much for the history of this the king of zebras. Equus grevyi can be readily distinguished from the other zebras, all of which, as every one knows, are purely African in their range, by a number of salient characters. It is a larger beast, and especially has a large head and ears, the latter being particularly hairy. The black and white bands are very definitely black and white as the variety of Burchell's zebra known as Equus Chapmanni. In other zebras there is a tendency to dulness in the black, which occasionally is even brown. The closeness of the stripes and their arrangement may be seen to differ from the mountain zebra, which perhaps comes nearest in striping. But this can be seen in a shorter time than it will take to write a description. It is probable, in fact, that Grevy's zebra is much more distinct from all other zebras, including the quagga,

EQUIDE OF THE OLD WORLD

than any of these latter are from each other. The Somali name of this zebra is Fer'o. Captain Swayne found them in that part of Africa in droves of six. He further observed that the young animals were beset with a closer coat of hairs than their parents, and that the black of their skins was dingy and brownish. Like all zebras—and this is the greatest source of annoyance to the sportsman, for the animals will mob you and thus warn off other game-they are curious and inquisitive, even impertinent in their attentions. They bray "like an Abyssinian mule," but they are not to be despised from a gastronomic point of view. This latter character did not impress Colonel Grant so favourably, for he found in their flesh a very horsey taste.

THE WILD ASS

Of wild asses there are certainly two species, if not more. In Asia we have the onager, and in Africa the parent of our donkey, the Nubian ass, Equus asinus, or, apparently better, E. africanus. In the Asiatic ass there is merely a long dorsal stripe running down the length of the back; in the African ass, besides this stripe, a cross bar on the shoulders-in legend, the marks of the Saviour. These two forms, which are really quite distinct from each other in correspondence to the continents which they people, are subdivisible into other races which may or may not have the value and rank of "species." In Asia we have first of all the hemippe (E. hemippus) of Syria, and the thick-coated kiang (E. hemionus) of Thibet, furred to stand the wintry climate of its mountainous home. In Africa Somaliland nourishes an ass known as the Equus somalicus, with stripes upon the legs, but no stripe upon the shoulder on each side. We have, in fact, in the zebras and donkeys a series of stages between plain