2M On the different Animals known as wild Asses. [No. 3, 



tain) and also the island of Socotra, it is quite certain* that great 

 troops of wild Asses, properly so called, exist not only in the sandy 

 deserts but upon the mountains of N. E. Africa. And it appears 

 that a specimen was not long ago added to the Paris Museum, and 

 was there designated " l'Onagre d'Abyssinie :" it was presented by 

 M. Degoutin, French Consul at Massoua, and (remarks Professor 

 Isidore St. Hilaire) " est certainement un Ane sauvage." It be- 

 longed, he tells us, to one of those troops which wander about the 

 deserts of N. E. Africa, the existence of which was long ago indi- 

 cated by iElian, and which are mentioned also by Leo Africanus in 

 the sixteenth century, and by Marmol in the eighteenth century. 



" The wild Ass, remarks the latter author, is grey. There are a 

 number of them in the deserts of Lybia, Numidia, and the neigh- 

 bouring countries. Their pace is so fleet, that only a Barb can come 

 up with them. In our days," continues M. St. Hilaire, " these troops 

 have been met with in various localities by different travellers ; 

 among others, by M. Caillaud, in Nubia; and to all the testimony 

 already published, may be added ' trois documents inedits,' re- 

 spectively by M. Botta (formerly travelling naturalist for the Paris 

 museum and now Consul at Jerusalem), by M. Tremaux (architect), 

 and by M. Gouzillot (Coptic Patriarch in Abyssinia). 



" The first observed, in Sennaar, a multitude of wild Asses in 

 troops, which were very distinct, according to the spoils obtained, 

 from other animals designated wild Horses [A. hemippus ?], which 

 inhabit the opposite coast of the lied Sea, in Arabia. The second, 

 in 1848, remarked them in the desert of Naga, in Nubia : their 

 coat was of a palish grey, and the ears were longer than those of 

 the Hemione [A. hemippus ?], but shorter than in the tame Ass [?]. 

 Lastly, M. Gouzillot, who passed six years in Abyssinia, has assured 

 us of the existence of Onagers in countless herds on the moun- 

 tains." 



These are of course the wild Asses noticed by Col. C. Hamilton 

 Smith, as occurring " on the Nile, above the cataracts; and abun- 

 dant on the upland plains, between the table-hills below Gous 

 Begun and the Baber-el-Abiad, in Atbara. (Vide ' Voyage on the 

 Baber-el-Abiad,' by Adolph, Linaud, and Hoskins's ' Travels in Ethio- 

 * Jour. Roy. Geoyr. Soc. 1835, p. 202. 



