Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/245

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NOTES AND QUERIES.


MAMMALIA.

CARNIVORA.

Stoats turning White in Winter.—In January last I received a Stoat (Mustela erminea) in almost white fur; it was shot at Newport, Salop, many years back (I did not book the date), but I distinctly remember that it was a very mild winter. I got one from the Isle of Wight which was quite white. I have so repeatedly had these animals in the partially white dress during mild winters that I do not now associate them with severe weather.—F. Coburn (7, Holloway Head, Birmingham).

Badgers near Scarborough.—A pair of Meles taxus, male and female, were captured alive at Thornton Dale, near Pickering, during the first week in March. These animals are not so uncommon in the district surrounding Scarborough and Pickering as is generally supposed, and they may be found in almost all the larger woods, but are rarely seen.—W.J. Clarke (44, Huntriss Row, Scarborough).

UNGULATA.

Existing Specimens of Equus quagga.—The material for the study of this interesting and now extinct ungulate is so limited that I may mention a few specimens observed by me when preparing an illustrated lecture on the Equidæ, since given on several occasions. There is a stuffed Quagga in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, one in the Tring Museum, another in the museum at Berne, and a smaller specimen in the museum of the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. When in Paris, I also had the pleasure of seeing the living representatives of the now rare Equus zebra, then exhibited to the public, one at the Jardin des Plantes, the other at the Jardin d'Acclimatation. I understand that there is a fifth Quagga preserved at Edinburgh, and I have seen an equine skeleton said to belong to this species in the Medical Museum of the Owens College, Manchester, A full census of the remains of the Quagga, such as has been compiled for the Great Auk, would be of much value to zoologists.— Graham Renshaw (Sale Bridge House, Sale, Manchester).

[A specimen (young) of Equus quagga is contained in the South African Museum, Cape Town, which I had the pleasure of seeing when visiting that establishment.—Ed.]