784 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



preceded that of Egypt, we might have presumed that the Egyptians 

 received trained horses from abroad before taming the ass that lived 

 wild in their land ; but nothing authorizes us to suppose that this was 

 the case. In all probability, the Egyptians made use of the indigenous 

 species, or the ass, before they did of the horse, an exotic species that 

 never came to Africa till it was domesticated. 



M. George, in his " Etudes Zoologiques," brings evidence corrobo- 

 rative of these views. Real wild asses are now found, according to 

 him, only in Abyssinia, where they have the slate-gray color and the 

 cranial peculiarities typical of the species. 



The name by which the Semitic peoples call the ass, hamar (an- 

 cient Assyrian, imeru), a name signifying red or bright fawn color, is 

 applicable to the hemione and not to the ass, and indicates that, con- 

 founding the two species as modern naturalists and travelers have 

 done, they gave to the introduced animal the name which they had 

 long applied to the similar but not identical native animal. M. San- 

 son was therefore right in calling the Oriental domesticated beast the 

 Egyptian breed, or JEquus Caballus Africanxis. M. Sanson has also 

 made a distinct race, the European, of the asses which are native to 

 the Hispano- Atlantic center ; and, as their restricted geographical area 

 leaves no doubt that their original home was there, the propriety of 

 this distinction can hardly be called in question. Many documents 

 also indicate that no race of asses is native to the northern regions of 

 the old continent. Herodotus, Aristotle, and Strabo, all speak of the ab- 

 sence of asses from Scythia and Northwestern Europe, and account for 

 it by the severity of the climate, which, they say, the animals are not 

 able to endure. They were perfectly familiar with that part of those 

 regions which lies north of the Black Sea ; so their testimony as to 

 that part is decisive. In the time of Diodorus, three hundred years 

 after Aristotle, horses were employed in the transportation of tin 

 from the shores of the British Channel to the mouth of the Rhine ; 

 and this indicates that asses were still unknown or rare in that part of 

 Gaul. There is evidence, however, that the ass had been acclimated 

 in the time of Aristotle in some of the most temperate parts of Cen- 

 tral Europe ; for Frontin, in his " Stratagems," tells that Atheas, 

 King of the Scythians, a contemporary of Philip of Macedon, being 

 at Avar with the Triballians and hard pressed, sent around his whole 

 unarmed population, with the asses and cattle, to appear on the rear 

 of his enemies and cause them to believe that he was receiving large 

 re-enforcements. 



Even now the ass does not live in, by any means, all of the north- 

 ern part of the Eastern Continent. Ujfalvey says that the animals live 

 and breed at Semipalatinsk, where the temperature falls to 15 below 

 zero, but that at Omsk they are " fancy stock," and are kept alive 

 only with great care ; and he gives statistics to show that asses and 

 mules are very few in comparison with horses all through Turkistan, 



