190 Game of Europe, W. Sc N. Asia, & America 



to be in the early winter coat. The above-mentioned survivor of the 

 Wohurn herd in March was, however, whitish grey in colour, and this 

 appears to be the normal tint ot the long winter coat late in the season, 

 and in old animals it may be nearly white. In the large male and 

 temale formerly exhibited to the public in the British Museum the coat, 

 indeed, is almost pure white externally, although below their tips the hairs 

 are of the usual pale sandy. Apparently this extreme whiteness has been 

 chiefly caused by the bleaching eflTect of exposure to the elements during 

 life, but it may be in part also due to fading after death. 



When in the long coat of winter, saigas display a special elongation of 

 the hair on the sides of the face. The overhanging and puffy muzzle is 

 very deep, compressed from side to side, with a markedly convex profile. 

 As regards other external parts of these animals, it will sufiice to say that 

 the limbs are somewhat inelegantly and clumsily built, that the ears (as in 

 so many animals inhabiting open plains) are comparatively small, and that 

 the tail is relatively short, not reaching within several inches of the hocks. 



Essentially an inhabitant of the open sandy and salt steppes, the saiga is 

 an animal whose distributional area has been steadily contracting as the 

 centuries roll by. A century or so ago its western range extended as tar as 

 Poland, and, according to Brehm, the lower part of the Danube Valley and 

 the Carpathians ; but ot late years it has retired more and more to the 

 Kirghiz steppes east of the Volga. ^ Formerly, indeed, it was found on 

 nearly all the steppes of South-Eastern Europe and Siberia, extending, as 

 already mentioned, from Poland and the foot of the Carpathians to the 

 Altai, and from the shores of the Black Sea and the Caucasus along 

 the Caspian Sea and the Sea of Aral to the Irtish and the Obi as 

 far north as lat. 55. It may now be regarded as one ot the most 

 characteristic denizens of the Kirghiz steppes. According to Helmersen 

 it wandered in winter through the south-western steppes ot Siberia 



' See Dr. A. Nehring, Tuiuhen uiut Stcppen, p. 90 (1890). 



