In the more open parts of Africa, north to Lake Rudolph, roamed Burchell's variety of this zebra, the one now commonly seen in menageries, in which the coat is creamy or golden yellow, and the black stripes are far broader. Its northern variety, Grevy's zebra, has the black stripes narrower, but so much more numerous that the white shows as mere lines between them. To these must be added an extinct species, killed off many years ago by Boer farmers and other sportsmen, which was known as the "quaha" (quagga) from its barking neigh; it was a dark brown, with stripings only on the head and neck.
The zebras seem incapable of becoming useful in harness or under the saddle, but their very near relatives, the asses—in spite of the sober gray of their dress, and their ungainly ears—have given us the patient and enduring donkey, which has been a servant of mankind, at least in Egypt, ever since the date of the earliest monuments; and wild asses still flourish on the deserts of Africa from Algiers to Somaliland. Another somewhat larger and more variable species roams the upland plains of Persia and northern India, while a variety, the "kiang," lives on the arctic tableland of Tibet, and is as untamable a creature as can be imagined.
| BURCHELL'S ZEBRA OF NORTHERN CENTRAL AFRICA |
HIPPOS, PIGS AND CAMELS
With the hippopotamus we begin the long list of artiodactyls, or cloven-footed animals, in which the weight of the body rests equally on the two central digits (third and fourth) which are alike in development, while the second and fifth digits, when present, do little or no work, except in the hippopotamus, whose outside toes are as long as the central ones, because needed by an animal treading on muddy soil, and accustomed to swimming. Although this huge marsh denizen is now confined to Africa, it ranged into southern Europe and eastward to India within quite recent times, but was destroyed by the human settlement of these countries; and civilization will in due time exterminate it from the Congo and Nile basins where it now is so numerous, and so incompatible with commerce and industry.
The swine are the first artiodactyls to show the typical cloven feet, and in them the two hind toes reach almost to the ground, so as to help the footing in the soft ground that they frequent. The foremost member of the family (Suidæ) is the wild boar of the Old World, known from the North Sea to the Bay of Bengal; and it is hard to realize that the fat hogs of our stockyards are modifications of this bristling forest boar with his muscular form, swift gait, and terrible tusks. Far more ugly in appearance, however, is the wart hog of Africa and the hairless "babiroussa" of Celebes, whose upcurved tusks far outmeasure those of the Indian boar. America has a family of native swine named peccaries—small, thin-legged, grizzled-black pigs, with very thick, bristly necks and large, angular heads. They have wicked little eyes, razor-sharp tusks in both jaws, and no visible tails, and the young are not striped as in the typical Suidæ. These pigs go in companies, wandering mainly at night in search of food, and taking almost anything edible. They are irascible, attack with fierce energy in concert, and are formidable foes to anything afoot, driving even the jaguar up a tree when the band turns on him. One kind of peccary is common in southwestern Texas, and its roving bands do much damage by night to crops and gardens; it is called a "javelin."
