12 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [suss 
English naturalists have as a rule adopted the view of Pallas. 
Sir William Flower regarded the Tarpans of the Steppe country, 
north of the Sea of Azov, as the nearest approach to true wild 
horses, while Lydekker is inclined to believe that the Tarpan of 
Pallas might very well be the ancestral form of the common 
horse, E. caballus. 1 Beddard, in support of this view, pointed out 
that in its general build and appearance the Tarpan is highly 
suggestive of the wild horses sketched by primitive man upon 
ivory. 2 
Notwithstanding all that has been written on the subject since 
Gmelin’s time, hippologists agree with Salensky that the relation- 
ship of the Tarpan with wild and domestic horses has not yet 
been cleared up. 3 
During the nineteenth century very little was done towards 
determining the systemic position of the Tarpan ; in fact, since 
the Tarpan was first described, the statements of one writer (for 
reasons which will appear later) have often contradicted those of 
another. But in 1866 a Tarpan foal was captured in the Zagradoffe 
Steppe on the property of Prince Ivatschubei, and reared by a 
domestic mare. When about eighteen years old this specimen 
was sent to the Moscow Zoological Garden, and eventually described 
in a paper published by Schatiloff. 
This, like Gmelin’s specimen, had a somewhat coarse head, was 
of a mouse colour, with legs black below the knees and hocks. 
The mane, however, instead of being short and crisp, as in 
Gmelin’s specimen, was 48 cm. (over 18 inches) in length and 
hanging to one side of the neck. Unfortunately the description 
of the tail of the Moscow specimen is somewhat meagre ; but as a 
full mane is invariably accompanied by a forelock and a full tail 
in the Equidae, it may be safely assumed that the tail resembled 
that of the common horse. 
As clearly realised some years ago by Gray of the British Museum, 
certain vestigial structures, known as callosities, warts, or chestnuts, 
are of considerable taxonomic value. Warts or chestnuts, as 
already mentioned, are present on both the fore and hind limbs of 
1 Nature, vol. lxv. p. 103. 2 Beddard’s Mammalia, p. 241. 
3 The chief papers on the Tarpan are mentioned in Salensky, Monograph 
on Prejvalsh/s Horse, St Petersburg, 1902. 
