1905 - 6 .] 
Professor Ewart on the Tar pan. 
13 
the common horse, and they also occur on the hind as well as 
the fore limbs of Prejvalsky’s horse; while in the Celtic pony, 
as in asses and zebras, the hind chestnuts are completely absent. 
It is especially worthy of note that though the hind chestnuts 
were not invariably present in Tarpans (they were absent in a 
Tarpan described by Krymsch), they were present in the Moscow 
specimen. 
It thus appears that the Moscow Tarpan agreed in its colour 
with the specimens referred to by Gmelin and Pallas, but differed 
in the mane and tail, in both of which, as in its callosities, it 
resembled the common horse, E. caballus. Two Tarpan skeletons 
have been preserved — one in the Museum of the University of 
Moscow, the other in the Museum of the Academy of Sciences, 
St Petersburg. The chief point of interest about these skeletons 
is, that as in the kyang and Prejvalsky’s horse and in certain 
Arabs there are only 5 lumbar vertebrae. 
In having only 5 lumbar vertebrae these Tarpans differed from 
the common horse of Europe, at least from the forest variety 
E. caballus typicus, in which I have invariably found 18 pairs 
of ribs and 6 lumbar vertebrae. 
Erom this striking difference in the skeleton it follows that, even 
should the Tarpan turn out to be a true wild species, it cannot be 
regarded as the sole ancestor of the common horse of Europe. 
As to the skull of the Moscow skeleton, Czerski came to the 
conclusion that it has, on the one hand, all the characteristics of 
Oriental horses, while on the other it approaches the Scottish 
breed to which belongs the pony ; in other words, the skull of 
the Tarpan preserved in the Moscow Museum resembles that of 
the Celtic pony, and its near relative, the Libyan horse. 
The skull of the Tarpan in the St Petersburg Museum, as 
Salensky points out, resembles skulls of immature specimens of 
E. prejvalsldi, but the bones of the limbs and limb girdles are 
decidedly more slender, and have less pronounced muscular ridges 
than in the wild horse of Central Asia. 
It may here be mentioned that for over a century all the 
horses living in a wild state in Europe, which happened to be of a 
mouse- dun colour, seem to have been regarded as Tarpans. If 
these wild horses were the offspring of several varieties, it will 
