252 Mr. E. Blyth on the different Animals known as Wild Asses. 
level countries; and, indeed, experience has long since taught 
that he is altogether unfit for crossing rocky and steep moun- 
tains.” Hill-ponies may, indeed, be cited as exceptions to a 
greater or less extent; but the fact is nevertheless true in the 
main—and hence the breeding of mules in mountainous coun- 
tries, which should combine the size and strength of one parent- 
species with the hardihood and sure-footedness of the other. 
All of the Asinine tribe seem to be quite indifferent to heat, and 
some at least of them are equally so to cold, as especially exem- 
plified by the Koulans or Ghor-khurs about Lake Aral ; and the 
tame Asses of this country, under the fiercest mid-day sun, may 
commonly be observed to evince their innate fondness for the 
parched desert, as strongly as a kid manifests its propensity to 
clamber rocks, by keeping to the dusty roads, in preference to 
the pasture, whenever they are not feeding. 
Of several species so very nearly akin, in different countries, 
it is remarkable that only the Ass should have been subjected to 
servitude (save in a few individual cases at most) ; but it appears 
that the experiments which have been systematically carried on, 
now for several years, by the Acclimatation Society at Paris, have 
been attended with considerable success in breaking-in Ghor- 
khurs, which have been bred there for a series of generations, 
and that these animals are now daily mounted and ridden. 
Many years ago, the celebrated Sheriff Perkins drove a pair of 
Quaggas through the streets of London, as I well remember to 
have witnessed when a child. 
The following species of the division Asinus, as defined by 
Gray, are now likely to be generally acknowledged :— 
1. A. Quagga. The Quagga, from the Cape territories, and 
scarcely found northward of the Gariep or Orange River ; but 
still in great herds southward, associating with the White-tailed 
Gnu, as the next does with the Brindled Gnu, and both with 
Ostriches (as in Xenophon’s time the A. hemippus did in Meso- 
potamia). The most Horse-lke in structure of any. The 
Hippotigris isabellinus of Col. C. H. Smith is probably founded 
on a Quagga-foal, perhaps not very exactly represented. Such 
an animal as this, or as the “Isabelline Zebra” of Levaillant 
could not have been overlooked by all subsequent explorers of 
South Africa. 
2. A. Burchellii, Gray (Equus zebra of Burchell). The Dauw, 
or original Hippotigris of the ancients, and also the original 
Zebra of Pigafetta from Congo; but unknown to Buffon, who 
regarded the next, or Mountain Zebra, and the Quagga as the 
two sexes of one species, denominated by him the Zebra (Hip- 
potigris Burchellit and H. antiquorum of C. H. Smith). Exten- 
