354 Further Notice of the Species of Wild Sheep. [April 



being considerably smaller than favigula ; and I infer, therefore, that 

 the dimensions above given are those of exceedingly stretched skins. 



" Mustela (?) calotus, H," {Calcutta Journal of Natural History , 

 II. 221, and pi. IX ; a figure which I, for one, wonld certainly never 

 have ventured upon publishing) . I can give no opinion of my own re- 

 specting this animal ; but in Mr. J. E. Gray's ' List of Specimens of the 

 Mammalia in the British Museum,' (p. 139,) I see " Mustela calotus, 

 Hodgson," placed as a synonyme of Sciurus europceus ! ! /* 



In XI, 286, two Tibetan animals are enumerated as — " 39. Equus, 

 wild ; E, kiany, Moorcroft ;f E. hemione" (quaere hemionus ?), " Auct ? 

 Found generally throughout Tibet. I have no specimen." — " 40. 

 Asinus equioides, mihi. Species want verification, spoken of by 

 Moorcroft and others : called wild Ass by the Tibetans, and said to be 

 common on the plains of Tibet. Possess no specimen." Mr. Hodg- 

 son, nevertheless, does not hesitate to give a name to the latter animal, 

 which I am satisfied refers to E. hemionus, or the Kiang (vide XV, 

 146) ; while the other is, I suspect, the same wild type of Equus 

 caballus as was described, and the foal figured, by Pallas 4 



* Mr. Gray's note of interrogation refers obviously to the work in which M. calotus 

 is published, not to the identification of the animal. 



t Vide Moorcroft's Travels, I, 312, and 442, and other notices in the same work. E. B. 



| While this article was proceeding through the press, the 28th No. of the Calcutta 

 Journal of Natural History came to hand, containing a paper by Mr. Hodgson, entitled 

 " Description of the Wild Ass and Wolf of Tibet," in which he now states—" There is, I 

 believe, no species of wild Horse in Tibet, and only one species of wild Ass, viz., the 

 Kiang:" and though fully aware that Moorcroft had named this animal Equus hiayig, 

 and that he had himself termed it Asinus equioides, it is now a third time wantonly 

 named Asinus polyodon ! The last name, too, being founded on the mistaken supposi- 

 tion that the little praemolar in front of the series of upper grinders in the Kiang is 

 peculiar to that animal ; whereas (it is needless to remind the generality of Zoologists) 

 this tooth is normally present in the Horse and Ass ( ! !), if not in every other species of 

 the genus ; but is subject to be occasionally lost, when its socket becomes gradually 

 filled up, and disappears totally. Referring to five skulls of Horses in the Society's 

 Museum, I find this tooth or its socket present in three of them, but lost and the socket 

 completely atrophied upon one side of one of these three ; and in an Ass's skull I find it 

 on both sides, as in Mr. Hodgson's figure of the series of upper molars of the Kiang : 

 so much, then, for the name (or rather synonyme) polyodon ! With regard to Pallas's 

 assertion (as quoted by Pennant and Shaw), that the hemionus has only 38 teeth in all, 

 or two fewer than in the Horse and Ass, it is difficult to imagine which are here meant 

 as being deficient, in addition to the two little upper premolars ; and I confess to enter- 

 taining doubts on the subject. The colour of the Kiang, I can safely assert to be ab> 



