42 THE EXISTIXG EQUIDAE [CH. 



48 cm. long hanging down on the left side of the neck. Un- 

 fortunately no minute study was made of its tail, but, as far 

 as can be seen from a photograph, the tail resembled that 

 of Prejvalsky's horse. There are in existence two Tarpan 

 skeletons, one at St Petersburg, the other at Moscow. On the 

 ground of the skull measurements Czerski came to the con- 

 clusion that the Tarpan has all the marks of the group of 

 Oriental horses, being connected on the one side with the 

 Arabian, on the other with the Scottish race to which the 

 ponies belong. The skull comes very near to Equus przewal- 

 skii, although it does not agree with any fully developed skulls 

 of this kind. The number of lumbar vertebrae agree in both 

 Tarpan and Prejvalsky horse, as both have five, but this does 

 not amount to much, as the same occurs in other horses, whilst 

 there are asses with six such vertebrae. The most genuine re- 

 semblance between the Tarpan and the Prejvalsky horse is the 

 black colour of the legs below the knees, a feature very persistent 

 (says Salensky) in the Prejvalsky horse \ and which separates 

 it from hybrid asses, in which the legs are alwaj-s half or 

 wholly white. But Salensky points out that there are some 

 essential differences between the Tarpan and Prejvalsky horse; 

 these are the presence of a forelock in the Tarpan, a longer 

 mane falling down at the side, and a tail more like that of 

 a horse. " All these marks indicate that the Tarpan is a type 

 more specialized towards the horse side than is Equus przewal- 

 skii. Too much stress cannot be laid on the absence of the 

 hock callosities in the only known Tarpan, for such a feature 

 is well known among true horses. The Prejvalsky horse 

 represents a more universal form between the horses and 

 the asses, and this leads to the assumption that more than 

 any other kind of the genus Equus it comes nearest to the 

 common stem-form of horses, asses, and half-asses." 



When the reader bears in mind the evidence obtained by 

 Colonel Hamilton Smith in 1814 — that there were no pure 

 tarpans within the Russian frontiers — he will at once see that the 

 tarpans described by Gmelin as having sometimes long, some- 

 times short ears, and that the Moscow tarpan with its long 

 hanging mane (in which it differed from the tarpans observed by 

 1 But this is disproved by the facts cited on pp. 27 and 32. 



