370 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



between Deir on the Euphrates and Mosul on the Tigris." (Carru- 

 thers, 1915, p. 22.) 

 A later account by Carruthers (1935, pp. 147-149) is as follows: 



The Syrian Wild Ass . . . had a wide range over the Syrian Hammad in 

 the 16th and 17th centuries. John Eldred saw wild asses between Hit and 

 Aleppo in 1584, Cartwright in 1603 beheld "every day great droves of wild 

 beasts, as wild asses all white," this was not far from Ana on the Euphrates. 

 Teixeira a few years later saw many herds in the region of Ur in the 

 Chaldees, while Delia Valle described a captive "wild ass or little onager" 

 which he saw in the piazza before the Pasha's house in Basra in 1625 .... 



It would appear that the Wild Ass disappeared from the Syrian Desert 

 during the 18th century, and was exterminated in Northern Arabia during 

 the 19th. Burckhardt reported that they were still numerous in the Shararat 

 country in the first decade of last century. Its last refuge appears to have 

 been in the lava country to the south-east of Jabal Druz. Musil says [1927 

 or 1931] "I have heard that as late as a hundred years ago there were Wild 

 Asses roaming near the depression of Sirhan, where they had an abundance 

 of water and, in the volcanic district, good pasture and still better hiding 

 places. It is said that the last Wild Ass was shot at the wells of Al Ghamr, 

 [34 miles] south-east of the lake of Azrak. Old Hmar told stories of his 

 grandfather's hunts for Wild Asses near the depression of Sirhan; but since 

 firearms have come to be used by the Bedouins, Wild Asses have become 

 less and less numerous. They are still to be found in the Jezire, between the 

 middle Euphrates and Tigris, whence the Sleyb often bring their Asses for 

 breeding purposes." Guarmani confirms this custom of crossing the domestic 

 asses with the wild ones, and also the fact of the extermination of the latter 

 south of the Euphrates. He says "When winter comes, many of the Saleib 

 cross the Euphrates to hunt the Wild Ass in Mesopotamia, there being no 

 more of these now (1865) in the Hammad. They take a certain number 

 of them alive to breed with their own." . . . 



It is almost certain that they have now been exterminated in their last 

 refuge, north of the Euphrates, the Jabal Sin jar, none having been seen 

 since 1927. Whether or not there are a few left in South Arabia, or in the 

 Oman hinterland, seems doubtful. 



The British Museum has a specimen from Mesopotamia, presented 

 by Layard before 1852, and a Syrian specimen, received from the 

 Zoological Society of London in 1867. No modern zoologist seems 

 to have met with this subspecies in the field, and wild-killed animals 

 are evidently among the rarest of all museum specimens. 



Antonius (1928, pp. 19-20) records a male that had been received 

 in 1911 from the "desert north of Aleppo," Syria, and was still 

 living in the Schonbrunn Zoo in 1928; also three preserved specimens 

 that had lived at Schonbrunn in the latter part of the past century. 



"The little Hemippus ... of Mesopotamia and Syria, domesti- 

 cated by the ancient Sumers before the introduction of the horse, 

 . . . became perhaps totally extinct in recent years. It could not 

 resist the power of the modern guns in the hands of the Anazeh and 

 Shammar nomads, and its speed, great as it may have been, was not 

 sufficient always to escape from the velocity of the modern motor 



