ORDER PERISSODACTYLA : ODD-TOED UNGULATES 333 



duke Ferdinand and others, there can be no doubt that these horses were a 

 truly royal game like the Urus and Bison and not of a little valued feral 

 breed. And if the mouse-colour and the short mane are recorded for some 

 of the last survivors in Poland and Southern Russia, it must be almost 

 certain that there was at least a strong strain of true wild blood in these 

 horses. S. G. Gmelin, one of the many German explorers of Russia in the 

 days of the great Catherine, hunted these "Tarpans" in 1763 in the surround- 

 ings of Bobrowsk, Woronesh. After him the author named these horses 

 scientifically "Equus gmelini" but perhaps there is an earlier name: Equus 

 silvestris v. Brincken, dedicated to the mouse-dun wild horses of Poland, 

 surviving in the forest of Bialowieza until the middle of the eighteenth 

 century, and in another game park until 1812. Although protected very 

 strictly against poaching and illegal hunting, the wild horse in Prussia vanished 

 in the second half of the sixteenth century. In the well-known forest of 

 Bialowieza, Poland, the "Tarpanis" were hunted as royal game in 1409, 

 when King Wladislaw Jagiello arranged a great chase in honour of his cousin, 

 Witold of Lithuania. In the immense forests they survived until the eighteenth 

 century, when they were extirpated before the time of the famous hunting 

 of the Saxon Kings. Their last refuge in the Poland of to-day was accord- 

 ing to Vetulani the great game park of the Count Zamoyski, situated at 

 Zwierzyniec, near Bilgoraj. Here they were strictly protected, until in a 

 severe winter between 1810 and 1820, probably from 1812 to 1813, the feeding 

 was impossible. The last survivors were captured and given to the peasants 

 of the surrounding country. According to these facts there are in no other 

 district of Poland more typical "Tarpans" among the little horses of the 

 peasants than in the surroundings of Bilgoraj [c/. Janikowski, 1942]. Ve- 

 tulani has proved these Polish wild horses as a more or less degenerated 

 branch according to their being adapted to the unsuitable wood life of 

 the Eastern or Russian Tarpan. 



The latter vanished from the fertile country of Woronesh before 1800, but 

 survived on the steppes of Tauria and Cherson until the middle of the nine- 

 teenth century. The last herds were certainly more or less intermingled with 

 feral horses, but the short mane being recorded even for the last example, 

 demonstrated the predominance of true wild blood. F. von Falz-Fein, the 

 well-known founder and owner of the matchless Ascania Nova Zoo, has 

 told the life-history of that last wild horse of Europe, an one-eyed old mare, 

 lingering for years around the feral horses of a certain Durilin, covered by 

 a domestic hehorse, captured, escaped with its filly, and some years later 

 hunted and killed on the ice by the peasants of Agaiman. 



There is only one drawing from a living example hitherto known: in the 

 description of the travels of Gmelin, edited by Pallas after the tragic death 

 of his comrade. This picture, drawn by Borisow from a one year old mare, 

 was later on copied by Schreber in his "Naturgeschichte der Saugetiere." 



It must be recorded that experiments for the rebreeding of the mouse- 

 dun Tarpan were started both in Germany and in Poland. In the Schorfheide 

 near Berlin and in the Munich Zoo the Germans try the rebreeding by 

 crossing the true yellow-dun Mongolian wild horse with mouse-dun mares 

 of various domestic breeds, while in Bialowieza the Poles settled upon some 

 most typical descendants of the last Bilgoraj wild horses, selected out of a 

 great number of peasant-horses in that district, without any interbreeding 

 of strange blood. The question is, which of the two trials will have the 

 better results. 



The home of the mouse-dun Tarpan extended eastward over the river 

 Don and probably to the right bank of the Wolga. It is possible in earlier 



