WILD HORSES. 627 



kistan, where the caravans going from Persia to Yarkand often 

 meet numerous droves of these animals. Farther north and 

 east, on the central plateau of Asia, lives the hemione of 

 Thibet (Equus hemionus proper), the hiang or disightai of the 

 Thibetans, which much resembles the preceding animal. Then in 

 the southwest, in the Desert of Syria and the north of Arabia, is 

 found the hemippus (Equus hemippus or E. hemionus Syria- 

 cus), with shorter ears and more elegant forms than the preceding 

 animals. Prof. Henri Milne-Edwards was of the opinion that the 

 three races of hemione were only local varieties of a single spe- 

 cies (Equus hemionus). 



North of the central plateau of Asia, the steppes of Turkistan 

 are prolonged so as to form the Desert of Gobi, and again farther 

 east into the Desert of Dzungaria. This region, situated immedi- 

 ately south of Siberia, from which it is separated by the valley 

 of the Amoor, and north of the Thian-Shan Mountains, which 

 separate it from China, remained almost entirely unexplored till 

 the time when it passed from the dominion of the Chinese to that 

 of the Russians. In this desert region the celebrated traveler 

 Prejevalski discovered in 1881, during his last journey into cen- 

 tral Asia, a wild horse distinct both from the tarpan and from 

 the different varieties of the hemione. 



The wild horses of this species, called kertag by the Kirghiz 

 and takM by the Mongols, live in small herds of from five to 

 fifteen individuals, under the direction of an old stallion. They 

 are very suspicious, and rarely allow themselves to be approached 

 within gunshot. They are extremely swift and easily escape the 

 best-mounted hunters. After several fruitless pursuits, Prejeval- 

 ski succeeded in bringing down a three-year-old stallion, whose 

 remains are now to be seen in the Museum of the Academy of Sci- 

 ences of St. Petersburg, and which is the type of the Equus Pre- 

 jevalskii of the naturalist Poliakoff. 



The wild horse of Dzungaria is an animal the size of the 

 hemione and more robust in its proportions, in which it resem- 

 bles the pony. Its head is large, with ears smaller than those 

 of the hemione, the shoulders thick, especially in the male, the 

 limbs robust and stubbier than those of the hemiones and the asses. 

 The mane is short and straight, and the moderately long tail is 

 terminated by a tuft of long hairs in much more abundant supply 

 than in the tail of the hemiones. It has warts on the hind- 

 legs as well as on the fore-legs — a peculiarity of the horse, dis- 

 tinguishing it from the other species of the genus, which have 

 warts only on the fore-legs. The hoofs are full like those of 

 the horse, and not compressed as in the other species ; and the 

 lower parts of the legs are furnished with long hairs falling to 

 the crown of the hoof, a feature which the hemiones lack. Like- 



