330 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



The plausibility of a white horse on the Siberian tundra is en- 

 hanced by Janikowski's account of present-day domesticated descen- 

 dants of the Wild Horse of Poland. He refers (1942, p. 682, figs. 4-5) 

 to two survivors "which had the remarkable and unique property of 

 turning white in winter .... Every winter they changed the 

 mouse-grey summer coat . . . into a snow-white coat, only the face, 

 fetlocks, mane and tail retaining the dark colour." 



European Wild Horses 



EQUUS spp. 



The taxonomic and nomenclatural status of European Wild Horses, 

 especially during the more recent historical times, becomes extraor- 

 dinarily complicated owing, on the one hand, to the lack of ade- 

 quate material and authoritative data and, on the other hand, to 

 the probability of interbreeding with domestic types. The technical 

 nomenclature is too involved to be discussed in detail in this brief 

 account. Opinions differ as to whether some of the described forms 

 were truly wild or were mixed with the blood of domestic horses. 

 Only purebred wild animals come properly within the scope of the 

 present report. 



Remains of Pleistocene or older horses have been recorded in 

 various localities from India and Turkestan to Spain, France, and 

 England ; some of these were doubtless ancestral to the present-day 

 horses. 



In classical times Strabo reported Wild Horses in Spain. In the 

 Middle Ages there are records of Wild Horses in Germany, Poland, 

 Lithuania, and Russia; but there is some question as whether all 

 of these records refer to purebred wild animals. 



In 1768 S. G. Gmelin collected four Tarpans in the Government 

 of Voronesh, Russia. Pallas (1811) reported Wild Horses as inhab- 

 iting the steppe country from the Dnieper to the Altai and beyond 

 into Central Asia, but as partly mixed with feral animals. Hamilton 

 Smith (1845-1846, pp. 160-166, pi. 3) received information from 

 Cossacks and others early in that century concerning truly wild 

 animals in Russian Turkestan and Mongolia. 



Antonius (1912, p. 513) mentions three animals captured alive in 

 Russia as late as the period 1853-66 ; he considers these the last Wild 

 Horses taken in Europe. However, Lydekker (1912, p. 81) suspects 

 that even Gmelin's specimens were hybrid Tarpans, and it is all 

 the more to be doubted that the animals of 1853-66 were purebred. 

 Antonius (1912, p. 516) has given the name of Equus gmelini to the 

 three last-mentioned animals, at the same time stating that Gmelin's 

 specimens were probably though not certainly identical with them. 

 If the specimens on which the name Equus gmelini was based were 



