20 M. Poliakof on a supposed new Species 
Academy of Sciences, under the designation “ tarpan.” After 
the donor I have named this species of horse Equus Przewal- 
skit; but, though more nearly akin to the domesticated horse 
than to any variety of wild ass existing in Asia, it is distinct 
from the “tarpan” or wild horse of travellers and explorers 
of the last century. Indeed the information regarding the 
tarpan collected by Rytchkof, Gmelin, Georgi, and Pallas is 
of so contradictory and confusing a nature that many zoolo- 
gists have decided that the so-called wild horses, or “ tarpans,” 
were not, strictly speaking, wild, but tamed horses which had 
resumed their wild state on recovering their liberty (Wagner 
in Schreber, ‘ Die Sdugethiere,’ pt. vi. pp. 20-29, 1835). A 
similar opinion was expressed by M. Bogdanof at a meeting 
of the Society of Naturalists of St. Petersburg; and Pallas 
was disposed to take the same view (Reise durch versch. 
Prov. des Russ. Reichs, iii. p. 346) when he assumed the 
feral horses, or “‘ tarpans ” in Tartar-Kirghiz dialect, roaming 
over the steppes of the Yaik and the Don as well as on that of 
Baraba, to have originated from domesticated horses owned 
by Kirghiz, Kalmuks, or other wandering tribes, and to have 
becomewild. In his ‘Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica,’ vol.i.p. 260, 
however, Pallas does not speak of the tarpans (Hqwus eque- 
ferus) in the same way, but merely states that there had been 
an intermixture, wild stallions having covered domesticated 
mares separated from the herd. Ecker, in a recently pub- 
lished work (‘ Das europiische Wildpferd und dessen Bezic- 
hungen zum domesticirten Pferd,’ Globus: xxxiv. Braun- 
schweig, 1878), accepts the tarpan as the true typical represen- 
tative of the wild horse, resembling in every particular the 
animal which, in his opinion, was indigenous at a period of 
remote antiquity in various parts of Kurope, and became sub- 
ject to man in prehistoric times, probably in the stone period. 
Ecker finds a striking resemblance between the tarpan and the. 
wild horse of the Caves of Solutré [near Macon], particularly 
in regard to size of body, head, &c. (See also “ Le Cheval 
sauvage de l’Hurope et ses rapports avec le Cheval domestique, 
d’aprés M. Ecker,” by M. Viguier, ‘ Revue Scientifique de la 
France et de l’Ktranger,’ no. xl. 5 Avril 1879, pp. 940-943.) 
Unfortunately we have no reliable information on this legend- 
ary tarpan since the end of last century, not a single traveller 
either in Siberia or Russia having communicated any infor- 
mation concerning it during the present century ; and the testi- 
mony of the above-mentioned explorers is merely conjectural. 
In any case, the animal I have named Equus Przewalskii 
cannot be the tarpan as described by Rytchkof, Gmelin, 
Pallas, and others. Rytchkof describes the tarpan as equal in 
