THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[THIRD SERIES.] 

 No. 34. OCTOBER I860, 



XXXI. — On the different Animals known as Wild Asses. 

 By Edward Blyth *. 



At least four distinct species — if the Dshiggitai or Kyang 

 (Equus hemionus of Pallas) be considered to differ specifically 

 from the Koulan or Ghor-khur (E. onager vel E. asinus onager 

 of Pallas) — have been confounded under the general denomina- 

 tion of " wild Asses ;" and two of the four have likewise been 

 designated "wild Horses" — a name to which they are less 

 entitled, as all agree in exhibiting the few structural distinctions 

 that characterize the Asinine sub-group apart from the Equine 

 or Caballine. 



The systematic names bestowed by Pallas are so far unfortu- 

 nate that they do not apply to the particular species which were 

 known by them to the ancient Greeks and Romans — one of 

 which latter has only recently been discriminated by Professor 

 Isidore Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, by the name Equus hemippus. This 

 (from its habitat) is necessarily the Hemionus vel Hemippus, or 

 "wild Mule" of the ancients; whilst their Onager, as the name 

 implies, refers as clearly to the veritable wild E. Asinus, which 

 to this day, as formerly, exists in numerous troops in north-east 

 Africa, if not also in the southern parts of Arabia and the island 

 of Socotra. The Hemippus of modern nomenclature is the 

 representative of the present group in Syria, Mesopotamia, and 

 the northern portion of Arabia, where it is designated by Col. 

 Chesney the "wild Horse," as distinguished from his "wild 

 Ass " of Southern Arabia ; and it is the species figured in Wag- 

 ner's f Saugethiere * (1856), pi. 33, by the erroneous name of 

 Equus asinus onager of Pallas, from a living individual formerly 

 in the Knowsley menagerie. 



It should be especially noted that the great naturalist Pallas 

 described his E. hemionus from personal observation of the ani- 

 * From the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1859. 



Ann. $ Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 3. Vol. vi. 16 



