The zebra is not the animal the ancients have mentioned under the name of _onagre_. In the Levant, in the eastern parts of Asia, and in the north of Africa, there exists a beautiful race of asses, which, like the finest horses, are natives of Arabia. This race differs from the common kind, by the largeness of the body, the slenderness of the legs, and the lustre of the hair. They are of an uniform colour, commonly of a fine mouse grey, with a black cross on the back and shoulders, sometimes they are of a bright grey, with a flaxen cross. These asses of Africa and Asia, although more beautiful than those of Europe, are originally, and equally descended from the _onagres_, or _wild asses_, which are still in great plenty in East and South Tartary, Persia, Syria, the islands of the Archipelago, and all Mauritania. The onagres differ from our domestic asses only by the qualities resulting from freedom and independence: they are stronger and swifter, and have more courage and vivacity; the form of their body is the same, but they have longer hair, and this difference varies again according to their condition, for our asses would have hair equally long, if it was not cut off at the age of four or five months. The hair of young asses is at first nearly as long as that of young bears. The hide of the wild ass is also harder than that of the domestic kind, and we are informed that it is covered with small tubercules, and it is even said that the _shagreen_ brought from the Levant, and which we employ for so many purposes, is made of these wild asses skin. But neither the onagres, nor the beautiful asses of Arabia, can be looked upon as the stock of the zebra species, though they resemble them in figure and swiftness. That regular variety of the climate of the zebra has never been exhibited by either of them. This beautiful species is singular, and very distant from any other. The zebra is also of a different climate from the onagre, being only to be met with in the most eastern and southern parts of Africa, from Ethiopia to the Cape of Good Hope, and from thence into Congo. He exists neither in Europe, Asia, America, nor in the northern parts of Africa. Those, which some travellers tell us they saw at the Brasils, had been transported thither from Africa. Others, which have been seen in Persia and in Turkey, have been brought thither from Ethiopia; and, in short, those which we have seen in Europe come almost entirely from the Cape of Good Hope. This point of Africa is their native climate, and where the Dutch have employed all their endeavours to tame and render them domestic, without having hitherto been able to succeed. That which was the subject of this description was very wild when he arrived at the royal menagerie in France, and is not yet entirely tamed; nevertheless, he has been brought to let a man sit on a saddle, but great precaution is necessary, as two men are obliged to hold the bridle while the third is on his back.