62 THE PRJEVAL8KY HORSE. 



tion of the Tarpan, and is printed in the paper by I. N. Schati- 

 loft'.* From it we learn some features of the Tarpan which were 

 not discussed by the earlier authors ; among others, that it has 

 a fore-lock and that its hind limbs possess no callosities. This 

 Tarpan was mouse-coloured, and the limbs from the tarsus down- 

 wards were very dark, almost black, in colour. Both these charac- 

 ters agree with Gmelin's statements. But in regard to the length 

 of the mane (a very important featvire) the protocol differs some- 

 what essentially from Gmelin's description. According to Gmelin, 

 the mane in the animals observed by him was very short and curly. 

 In the Tarpan of the Moscow Zoological Gardens, on the contrary, 

 its length was 48 cm. and it hung down over the left side of the 

 neck. Unfortunately, the tail was not sufficiently investigated. 

 Its form, and the arrangement of the hair, are not clearly distin- 

 guishable in the photograph given in I. N. Schatiloff's paper. 

 This is unfortunate, as these points would be of special interest in 

 the comparison with the Prjevalsky horse. 



There are two skeletons of the Tarpan in existence.! One of 

 them is in the Zoological Museum of the Academy of Science, and 

 belongs to an animal presented by I. N. Schatiloff in 1862. 

 The animal was not then recognised as a Tarpan, but its skeleton 

 was nevertheless preserved, and examined for the first time by 

 Czerski. In my tables of the dimensions of the skull, as well as 

 in those of the measurements of the shoulder and pelvic girdles 

 and the bones of the extremities, I give the size of such of the 

 bones of this skeleton as are of interest in comparison with the 

 corresponding bones of E. iirjevalsHi. The second skeleton is in 

 the Zoological Museum of the University of Moscow. 



From craniometric observations, Czerski came to the conclusion 



* I. H. lUaxHJOBb. CooCmenie o xapnauaxi. MocKBa, 1884. 



t In a short paper, entitled Wilde Pferde ivi Park des Herrn Fah-Fein in 

 Ascania Nova (Sudrussland), which appeared in the Blusirirfeji Zeitung iov 1901 

 (No. 3010). Matschie makes some statements regarding the Tarpan. Of the 

 animal belonging to the Academy of Science he says : " Unfortunately the Russian 

 zoologists could not convince themselves that they had to do with a wild horse, 

 biit considered it to be a Steppe horse which had run wild, and presented it to a 

 friend. In this way the only representative of the Russian wild horse which 

 could be examined by scientists was lost to science. No skin, skull or skeleton of 

 the Tarpan is to be found in any museum in the world, &c." As remarked 

 above, at the present time there are two skeletons of the Tarpan, one in Moscow, 

 the other in St. Petersburg. The St. Petersburg skeleton, together with the skull 

 and the Moscow skull, were described by Czerski in his excellent monograph, 

 which I have cited above, and in which are found all the statements regarding the 

 Tarpan. It is strange that Matschie made no use of the material contained in 

 Czerski's monograph (which must certainly have been known to him), but instead 

 made quite incorrect assertions without naming his authorities. 



