Note on the Kiang. 99 



myself and others — not to add that it is really as old as Aristotle, and 

 no other than the Hemionus. 



Upon the questions of the identity of the Kiang of Tibet with the 

 Ghorkhar of the Indus and the Dziggatai of Mongolia, much has 

 been said and will be said, as upon the further questions of their 

 identity with the Yo-to-ze of China and the Koulan of Tartary. The 

 curious in such matters will, of course, consult travellers and sys- 

 tematists, as I have done. My own impression derived from such 

 references, carefully enough made I hope, was, that the tattle of 

 travellers cannot be relied on, and that systematists, who attempt to 

 build upon such foundations, and thereupon to divide the wild asses 

 of Asia into many species with H. Smith,* or to lump them all into 

 one with Col. Sykes, f are rather adding to, than lessening our doubts 

 and perplexities. Col. Sykes' paper is very ingenious, and, in part, 

 equally sound, leaving no room for future question that the wild ass 

 of Cutch, Scinde, and Southern Persia, is one and the same species, viz. 

 the Ghorkhar, live specimens of which were imported into Europe 

 by Messrs. Dussumier, Clarkson, and Glasspole. The same argu- 

 ments and statements of Col. Sykes, however, which convince me of 

 that, likewise convince me that Pallas' Dziggatai and the Kiang 

 of Tibet, are perfectly distinct from the Ghorkhar above limited ; 

 whilst in regard to the distinctness of the two latter, one from the 

 other, I know not that I can or need add any thing to what my 

 original paper assumes, viz. that if Pallas has accurately described 

 the Dziggatai, then the Dziggatai is not the Kiang. In my Tibetan 

 Catalogue I cited the Kiang and another alleged species of Tibet ; 

 but upon no better grounds than the conflicting and utterly insuffici- 

 ent statements of Moorcroft,| Gerard, and my own informants. But 

 when I came (with sufficient materials before me for the scientific 

 determination of the Tibetan species) to look closely into those state- 

 ments relative to the animal, it seemed to me the better course to 

 leave unheeded what I had said on such frail and shifting grounds, 

 and to describe the Kiang upon a tabula rasa, neither Moorcroft, 

 Gerard, nor any one else having anticipated me, by either naming or 



* Nat. Library, Vol. xii. t Zoological Journal, Oct. 1S;J7. 



X See Capt. Cunningham's Notes on Kanaver, Journ. As. Soc, for con- 

 firmation of this assertion. 



