356 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



which they consider more palatable that the best mutton." (J. H. 

 Miller, in Carruthers, 1913, pp. 607-608.) 



"The wild ass, or kulon, is unlikely to be seen unless a special 

 attempt is made. . . . The kulon is a rare animal, excessively wild 

 and lives in very difficult country. Featureless plains, bitterly cold 

 in winter, waterless and sunbaked in summer, are its habitat. The 

 kulon ranges . . . through Dzungaria to the edge of the Gobi. We 

 have seen them at the lowest elevation in the heart of the conti- 

 nent, and at 7,000 to 8,000 feet above the sea, in localities not very 

 far distant from each other." (Carruthers, 1915, p. 154.) 



In 1926 a journey made by Lattimore (1929, pp. 228-321) 

 through the southwestern Gobi filled in some blank spaces in the 

 known distribution of this species. West of Edsin Gol, at the Wild 

 Horse Well (about lat. 42 N., long. 99 E.) : "They say that on 

 this fringe of the Khara Gobi there are wild horses . . . and wild 

 asses" (p. 228). Near the "House of the False Lama" (about lat, 

 42 30' N., long. 98 E.) : "To this whole series of springs there 

 come at night antelope, wild asses, and, they say, wild camels" (p. 

 243) . In the vicinity of Ming Shui (about lat. 43 N., long. 96 E.) : 

 "To our camp that day there came riding a Mongol, who had fol- 

 lowed us for two marches to sell the hinder half of a wild ass that 

 he had shot in the Mongol way from a pit near the drinking place" 

 (p. 251) . West of Ming Shui, near the eastern outposts of the Kar- 

 lik Tagh: "Here the camel herders in the dawn reported a herd 

 of wild asses. It was the only sight of them that I ever had .... 

 Their skins make first-class clothing, with much more wear than the 

 antelope skin. I have heard that there is a Turki proverb that wild 

 asses are so hard to kill that even when you get the skin of one 

 safely spread out on your sleeping platform it wiggles. The meat 

 is something like beef, but a sublime beef. It is very dry, with a 

 coarse grain and a strange aromatic sweetness. Chinese and Mon- 

 gols put it above any other game, and it undoubtedly ranks with 

 the noblest vension." (P. 252.) At Wu-t'ung Wo-tze, about 100 

 miles northeast of Kucheng, in the Dzungarian Gobi: "It . . . was 

 formerly a well-known wild-ass ground; but the wild ass in this 

 region has been almost killed off by the Qazaqs. Both Mongols and 

 Qazaqs will put themselves to more trouble to bag wild ass than 

 almost any other game." (P. 321.) 



Farther southwest than the territory covered by Lattimore, along 

 the route from Hami to Bulundsir River, Wild Asses were 

 reported in 1898 in a number of places by Futterer (1901, pp. 179, 

 180, 184, 188) . A specimen obtained northwest of the last-mentioned 

 locality became the type of Equus hemionus luteus Matschie. 

 In 1934 Sven Hedin (1940, pp. 195, 197, 200) found tracks in the 

 Ghashun Gobi about 75 miles west of Futterer 's route. This area 



