91 



October 10th, 1837. 

 Richard Owen, Esq., in the Chair. 



A paper was read by Colonel Sykes " On the identity of the 

 " Wild Ass of Cutch and the Indus, with the Dzeggetai (Equus He- 

 " mionus of Pallas)." 



The author commences with observing, " it is somewhat strange 

 and anomalous, that an animal known to and named by Aristotle, and 

 noticed by ^lian, Pliny, and subsequent authors, down to our own 

 day, an animal remarkable for its beauty of colour, the antelope 

 lightness of its limbs, and the tales of its swiftness, and its classic 

 locality, should have attracted so little the attention of men of 

 science, that it was not even figured* until Pallas put it before the 

 public. The magnificent work of BufFon does not boast a representa- 

 tion of it ; and as the proceedings of the scientific body at Peters- 

 burg are necessarily rare, and confined to some few great public 

 libraries, it was in fact scarcely known to the European world, even 

 though Pennant copied Pallas's account in 1793. To remedy this 

 defect we are indebted to M. Isidore Geoft'roy Saint Hilaire, who 

 took advantage of the importation by M. Dussumier, of a female 

 into the Paris Menagerie, to have a correct coloured figure made to 

 accompany his paper, ' Sur le Genre Cheval,' in the Nouvelles An- 

 nales du Museum d'Histoire NatureJlef. But even in this case the 

 defect of it not appearing before the public in a sufficiently accessible 

 and popular form, limited the benefit that should have resulted from 

 M. Saint Hilaire's zeal and talents. Though I have been an ama- 

 teur of Natural History for a great part of my life, I must confess 

 that it is to a private copy of M. St. Hilaire's paper, obligingly 

 presented to the Zoological Society of London, that I am indebted 

 for my first view of a coloured representation of the Dzeggetai, 

 and it was only last week that this fell into my hands. I have 

 been thus particular in noticing the want of readily accessilile fi- 

 gures of animals (for my observation will apply to many other ani- 

 mals beside the Dzeggetai,) as this want of means to correct my 

 judgement led me into the belief that a recently imported Wild Ass 

 of Cutch, which was sent to England by an old friend of my own 

 from Bombay, was a different species from the Dzeggetai of Pallas, 

 which is represented as inhabiting the desert regions between the 

 rivers Onon and Argun, on the southern parts of Siberia, through 

 Tartary, even to the frontiers of China and Thibet ; and I might have 

 been justified in my supposition had I attached the same weight that 



• In the Novi Commentarii Academi<e Scientiarum Peiropolitance, t. xix.. 

 1774, p. 417. 



t t. iv. p. 97. 

 No. LVIII. — Proceedings of the Zoological Society. 



