12 THE PEJEVALSKY HOESE. 



remarkable, and I was inclined, at first, to regard it as an indi- 

 vidual iseculiarity, but a closer study of the skins of Prjevalsky 

 liorses of different ages, and killed at different seasons, showed 

 that the adult animals killed in winter had nevertheless a summer 

 coat. This is illustrated by a ten-year old horse (No. 3,094), 

 killed in January, 1895, during the expedition of Roborovsky and 

 Kozlov. If these data are reliable, it may be assumed that the 

 tendency to change the summer coat for a winter one diminishes 

 with increasing age. 



In E. prjevalskii, a change of hair probably occurs in the 

 spring, and takes place very slowly, as is the case with some of 

 our domestic horses. This can, naturally, only be proved by the 

 observation of living animals. The summer coat is much shorter 

 than the winter one, and it is smooth and not curly. Tlie hair is 

 about as long as that of the onager and the kiang, which it further 

 resembles in colour. The colour of the back is a light reddish- 

 brown. This shade extends over the sides and gradually merges 

 into the yellowish-white of the under part of the body ; so that 

 there is no sharp line of demarcation between the back and the 

 flank, and between the flank and the belly. The head is of the 

 same colour as the back, except that the lips and the end of the 

 muzzle in the region of the nostrils are white. Between the nos- 

 trils the white colour changes into grey. The ears are light brown 

 at the base, and dark brown at the tip ; while the interior is 

 covered with white hair. 



When in its winter coat, the Prjevalsky horse has tufts of 

 hair — which Poliakof termed " whiskers " — on the sides of the 

 head. In the summer coat these can hardly be distinguished ; 

 the hair of the cheek being of almost the same length as that on 

 other parts of the body. In summer, however, there are long 

 tufts of hair under the jaw, which present the appearance of an 

 elongated beard. The mane, which begins between the ears and 

 extends to the withers, consists of erect hairs of two colours : dark- 

 brown and light grey ; the latter being usually shorter than the 

 former, and gathered into tufts. The hair of the mane is harder 

 than the hair of other parts of the body. 



Behind the mane the dorsal stripe extends along the entire 

 back, in the form of a narrow (about 5 mm. broad), reddish-brown 

 (darker than the hair of the back), straight band which, like 

 the dorsal stripe of the onager and the kiang, is continued on 

 to the tail (Fig. 4). The dorsal stripe can be fairly readily distin- 

 guished running along the dorsal side of the proximal part of the 

 tail between the light grey erect hair of this region, but it can 

 onl}- be plainly seen in those animals which carry the summer 



