246 Mr. E. Blyth on the different Animals known as Wild Asses. 



tain), and also the island of Socotra, it is quite certain * that 

 great troops of wild Asses, properly so-called, exist not only in 

 the sandy deserts, but upon the mountains of North-east Africa ; 

 and it appears that a specimen was not long ago added to the 

 Paris Museum, and was there designated "FOnagre d'Abyssinie." 

 It was presented by M. Degoutin, French consul at Massoua, 

 and (remarks Prof. Isidore St.-Hilaire) " est certainement un 

 Ane sauvage." It belonged, he tells us, to one of those troops 

 which wander about the deserts of North-east Africa, the exist- 

 ence of which was long ago indicated by iElian, and which are 

 mentioned also by Leo Africanus in the sixteenth century, and 

 by Marmol in the eighteenth century. 



" The wild Ass," remarks the latter author, " is grey. There 

 are a number of them in the deserts of Lybia, Numidia, and the 

 neighbouring countries. Their pace is so fleet that only a barb 

 can come up with them. In our days," continues M. St.-Hilaire, 

 " these troops have been met with in various localities by different 

 travellers — among others, by M.Caillaud, in Nubia ; and to all the 

 testimony already published may be added ( trois documents in- 

 edits/ respectively by M. Botta (formerly travelling naturalist for 

 the Paris Museum, and now consul at Jerusalem), by M. Tremaux 

 (architect), and by M. Gouzillot (Coptic Patriarch in Abyssinia). 



" The first observed, in Sennaar, a multitude of wild Asses in 

 troops, which were very distinct, according to the spoils obtained, 

 from other animals designated wild Horses [A. hemippusf], 

 which inhabit the opposite coast of the Red Sea, in Arabia. The 

 second, in 1848, remarked them in the desert of Naga, in Nubia ; 

 their coat was of a palish grey, and the ears were longer than 

 those of the Hemione [A, hemippus ?] , but shorter than in the 

 tame Ass [?]. Lastly, M. Gouzillot, who passed six years in 

 Abyssinia, has assured us of the existence of Onagers in count- 

 less herds on the mountains." 



These are of course the wild Asses noticed by Col. C. Hamilton 

 Smith, as occurring "on the Nile, above the cataracts; and 

 abundant on the upland plains, between the table-hills below 

 Gous Regun and the Baber-el-Abiad, in Atbara. ( Vide ' Voyage 

 on the Baber-el-Abiad/ by Adolph Linaud ; and Hoskins's ' Tra- 

 vels in Ethiopia/)" According, also, to Sir J. Gardner Wilkin- 

 son, they are "common in the districts of the Thebaidt-" 

 Hoskins met with them in the small desert immediately below 

 the fifth cataract. " This desert," he remarks, (( is sandy, with 

 quartz and flinty slate disseminated. We saw for the first time 

 three wild Asses, which had been browsing among the acacias 

 near the Nile. There are great numbers of them in the coun- 



* Journ. Roy. Geogr. Soc. 1835, p. 202. 



t Domestic Manners of the Ancient Egyptians, iii. 21. 



