AVILU HORSE. 



li 



but little smaller than that of the female skull of the Mongolian 

 Wild Horse. In the Dartmoor Pony the length of the tooth-row 

 is only o^ inches. 



In addition to the length of its facial portion, the skull of the 

 Wild Horse here exhibited (N.H. 16, fig. 13) is characterised by the 

 absence of any distinct vestige of a depression in front of the eye- 

 socket, and by the slight extent to which the face is bent down on 

 the basi-cranial axis, so that a continuation of the line of the latter 

 will cut the face above the aperture of the nose-cavity *. 



In some instances there are indistinct transverse barrings on the 

 legs, and there may be faint indications of a shoulder-stripe. 



In its typical form the Wild Horse appears to be restricted to 

 the Gobi Desert and perhaps some of the neighbouring districts ; 

 but the Wild Horses formerly inhabiting the Kirghiz Steppes 

 and known as Tarpan, were evidently near akin. They were 

 probably, however, crossed to a greater or less degree with escaped 

 domesticated Horses ; and the few skins which have been 

 preserved show decisive evidence of mixed blood in their mouse- 

 coloured coats, such a tint among Horses being a sure indication 

 of cross-breeding. In the early part of last century, when 

 Tarpan were still numerous on the Kirghiz Steppes, the Taters 

 asserted that the pure breed was to be met with only to the far 

 eastward, in Central Asia — that is to say the Gobi Desert ; and 

 it accordingly seems probable that the Mongolian Wild Horse 

 itself ought properly to be called Tarpan, or, in the plural, 

 Tarpani. 



A small Horse living in London in the early part of last 

 century and stated to have come from the heart of China was 

 named Asinus equuleus by Colonel Hamilton Smith. If as 

 seems possible, this animal was a true Wdd Horse, the name 

 equuleus, as the earlier, should replace przevalskii, 



* Prof. J. C. Ewait, Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, vol. x\\, 1907, p. ooo, 

 and Quarterly Review, April 1907, p. 547, has made the Mongolian Wild 

 Horse the type of a so-called '• Steppe-group " characterised by the marked 

 detiection of the facial portion of the skuU as compared with the basal axis. 

 No such feature is, however, presented by any of the skulls of this race in 

 The Museum Collection, although it is apparent to some extent in the one 

 figured in the tirst of the two memoirs mentioned. 



