WILD TARPAN AND ITS RELATIONS 75 



{Gesckichte Masurens, Danzic, 1870) says : * In the 

 time of the Teutonic Knights, wild horses and 

 other game were hunted for the sake of their skins. 

 In 1543 Duke Albert sent an order to the com- 

 mander at Lyck, bidding him take measures for the 

 preservation of the wild horses.' Proofs of the 

 horse being an object of chase in Poland and 

 Lithuania are found far into the seventeenth century. 

 As to Russia, it is sufficient to quote the remarkable 

 words of Vladimar Monomach, Prince ofChernigoo, 

 who lived from 1053 to 1125. He says of himself, 

 in his posthumous exhortation to his sons (pre- 

 served in the Lawrentkian Chronicle) : ' But at 

 Chernicroo I did this : I caught alive and bound 

 with mine own hands from ten to twenty wild 

 horses ; and as I rode along the river Ross (which 

 formed a sort of boundary between the Russians 

 and the wild Turkish Polovtsy), I caught similar 

 horses with my own hands.' " 



Other writers, as quoted by Colonel Charles 

 Hamilton Smith, ^ refer to the colour of these 

 Central European wild horses. Erasmus Stella, 

 for instance, writes of the wild horses of Prussia 

 as being like the domesticated species, but with 

 soft backs, unfit to be ridden, shy and difficult 

 to capture, but very good venison. They were 

 again referred to by Andrias Schneebergius, who 



^ Jardine's Naturalist''s Library^ vol. xx. Horses^ 2nd ed. p. 158 ; 

 the first edition was published in 1841. 



