Zebra
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Zebra. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
an African animal, with straight hoofs. It is classified between the horse and the ass. There are three species. The common zebra is of a whitish color, with regular black stripes running crosswise or the shortest way on nearly every part of its body, legs, tail and neck. It is about four and one-half feet high at the shoulder. It is an exceedingly lightfooted, graceful animal, with the activity of a horse, but with an extremely intractable, stubborn temper. It was formerly abundant in the hilly regions of South Africa. Although fleet and wary, it seems doomed to extermination. It frequently feeds and herds with the quagga, a very similar animal without stripes on its hind quarters and legs. The zebra is not injured by the tsetse fly. See Horse ; Uganda An important natural asset, hitherto little appreciated and yet to be exploited, undoubtedly exists in the wild fauna of South Africa, and a far-reaching movement for the establishment of sanctuaries, or game reserves, in suitable localities throughout the continent has had foundation not only in sentiment, but also in a recognition of the potential utility of many classes of game now threatened with extinction. The prevalence of devastating stock diseases lends additional importance to the partial or complete immunity enjoyed by indigenous forms, and has led veterinarians and stock breeders to seek therein a means of obviating some portion of the resulting losses among domestic animals. When the mule has failed to show any marked degree of natural resistance to horse sickness, the zebroid or cross between horse and zebra, is destined to play an important part in the tropics.--Consular Report.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a popular name for any of the striped forms of the genus Equus; thus embracing the quagga, the true zebra, and Burchell's zebra. In all three the external characters are those of the ass rather than of the horse; the legs are without warts, the tail is furnished with long hairs only toward the extremity, the neck is full and arched, and the mane stiff and erect. All the species of this division are rapidly vanishing before advancing civilization, and in all Vol. X 32 probability will become extinct before very many years. The true zebra is the E. zebra, from the mountainous regions of south Africa. It stands about 4½ feet at the shoulder; ground tint white, with black stripes, vertical on body and horizontal on legs; limbs slender, head light, ears long and open. The zebra lives in small herds in secluded spots; its sense of hearing, sight, and smell is CHAPMAN ZEBRA extremely acute, and on the least alarm the whole herd scampers off. When compelled to defend themselves zebras form a compact body with their heads in the center and their heels outward, and have been known to beat off the leopard with their kicks. The zebra has been domesticated, but its vicious temper renders it of little value as a beast of burden. Burchell's zebra (E. burchellii) differs little from the true zebra, except in the fact that the ground tint is yellow.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both accounts treat the quagga as a living zebra sharing pasture with the striped kinds, but the last known quagga had in fact died in the Amsterdam zoo in 1883; DNA taken from museum skins in 1984 — the first genetic material ever recovered from an extinct animal — showed it was not a separate species at all, but a southern race of the plains zebra. Modern zoology counts three living species: the plains zebra, the mountain zebra Collier's called "the true zebra," and Grevy's zebra of Kenya and Ethiopia, which neither entry mentions. The confident prediction that all "will become extinct before very many years" proved half wrong: plains zebras still number in the hundreds of thousands, while Grevy's zebra has fallen to a few thousand and the Cape mountain zebra, down to a few dozen animals in the 1950s, has been nursed back to several thousand in reserves of exactly the kind Aiton's 1910 entry was urging. The zebroid that a consular report expected to "play an important part in the tropics" never did, though Aiton's aside about the tsetse fly looks shrewder than it did: field experiments since 2014 indicate that the stripes themselves deter biting flies from landing.
Written for this edition, 2026.