246 Mr. E. Blyth on the different Animals known as Wild Asses. 
tain), and also the island of Socotra, it is quite certain * that 
great troops of wild Asses, properly so-called, exist not only in 
the sandy deserts, but upon the mountains of North-east Africa ; 
and it appears that a specimen was not long ago added to the 
Paris Museum, and was there designated “l’Onagre d’Abyssinie.” 
It was presented by M. Degoutin, French consul at Massoua, 
and (remarks Prof. Isidore St.-Hilaire) “est certainement un 
Ane sauvage.” It belonged, he tells us, to one of those troops 
which wander about the deserts of North-east Africa, the exist- 
ence of which was long ago indicated by Atlian, and which are 
mentioned also by Leo Africanus in the sixteenth century, and 
by Marmol in the eighteenth century. 
“The wild Ass,” remarks the latter author, “is grey. There 
are a number of them in the deserts of Lybia, Numidia, and the 
neighbouring countries. Their pace is so fleet that only a barb 
can come up with them. In our days,” continues M. St.-Hilaire, 
_“ these troops have been met with in various localities by different 
travellers—among others, by M. Caillaud, in Nubia; and to all the 
testimony already published may be added ‘trois documents in- 
édits,’ respectively by M. Botta (formerly travelling naturalist for 
the Paris Museum, and now consul at Jerusalem), by M. Trémaux 
(architect), and by M. Gouzillot (Coptic Patriarch in Abyssinia). 
“The first observed, in Sennaar, a multitude of wild Asses in 
troops, which were very distinct, according to the spoils obtained, 
from other animals designated wild Horses [A. hemippus?], 
which inhabit the opposite coast of the Red Sea, in Arabia. The 
second, in 1848, remarked them in the desert of Naga, in Nubia ; 
their coat was of a palish grey, and the ears were longer than 
those of the Hemione [.A. hemippus?|, but shorter than in the 
tame Ass[?]. Lastly, M. Gouzillot, who passed six years in 
Abyssinia, has assured us of the existence of Onagers in count- 
less herds on the mountains.” 
These are of course the wild Asses noticed by Col. C. Hamilton 
Smith, as occurring “on the Nile, above the cataracts; and 
abundant on the upland plains, between the table-hills below 
Gous Regun and the Baber-el-Abiad, in Atbara. (Vide ‘ Voyage 
on the Baber-el-Abiad,’ by Adolph Linaud ; and Hoskins’s ‘ Tra- 
vels in Ethiopia.’)”” According, also, to Sir J. Gardner Wilkin- 
son, they are “common in the districts of the Thebaid +.” 
Hoskins met with them in the small desert immediately below 
the fifth cataract. ‘This desert,” he remarks, “is sandy, with 
quartz and flinty slate disseminated. We saw for the first time 
three wild Asses, which had been browsing among the acacias 
near the Nile. There are great numbers of them in the coun- 
* Journ. Roy. Geogr. Soc. 1835, p. 202. 
+ Domestic Manners of the Ancient Egyptians, iii. 21. 
