No. 133.] 259 



render them most valuable beasts of burden in mountainous comj- 

 tries ; and the caution and precision with which a drove of them, 

 walking with great regularity in a single line, will cross over the 

 stupendous and awfully narrow passes, or ascend and descend the 

 almost perpendicular steeps, have excited the astonishmeu.t d% 

 many a tourist. 



The she mule has occasionally, but very rarely, been known t© 

 produce again with a horse or an assj but there is no instance ob 

 record of two mules breeding together. 



The domestic ass is from the Genus Equns (horse) which com- 

 prises the asinus or ass, the zebra, Djiggutal, Quagga &c. He k 

 distinguished by the tail having long hairs at the end only, wheHK 

 they form a brush, by the mane being short and erect, by onlf 

 the forelegs having warty callosities, and by the markings being 

 disposed in stripes. 



The migratory herds of wild asses wliich inhabit, at one searSoa, 

 tJie warm climate of Persia, and at another the southern part<^ 

 the Russian Empire, are supposed to be of the same species as t-he 

 common domestic ass employed in this more northern region.. 

 But the accounts of wild asses published by various travellers a»-; 

 so dissimilar, that we may almost question v/hether the original. 

 species of the wild ass has been satisfactorily ascertained, and 

 whether several other species do hot remain to be describe*!!. 

 Bruce in his travels (vol. 4 page 522) mentions' wild asses veij 

 like ours in neck, head, face anfi tail " only their skins are streaked^ 

 and as inhabiting the same parts of Abyssinia as the Zebra. It is 

 not unlikely tliat the ass thus indicated is an undescribed spe 

 cies. Bell in his travels in Tartary (vol. 1 page 221) notices 

 many wild asses like the common ass except that their hair u 

 x/)aved white and brown like that of the tiger. The species mentioned 

 in Ainsworth's Travels (page 41) and in R. K. Porter's Travels 

 (vol. 1 page 452) is the khur,or wild ass of Persia, Arabia, and 

 Mesopotamia and is probably indentical with that of the Thebaid 

 and other parts of the African continent. It is also the wild mule 

 of the ancients. It has a black mane and no line along the baefe 

 or across the shoulder. Allied to this would feea to be the her^ 



