Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/645

Rh, where the caravans going from Persia to Yarkand often meet numerous droves of these animals. Farther north and east, on the central plateau of Asia, lives the hemione of Thibet (Equus hemionus proper), the kiang or disightai of the Thibetans, which much resembles the preceding animal. Then in the southwest, in the Desert of Syria and the north of Arabia, is found the hemippus (Equus hemippus or E. hemionus Syriacus), with shorter ears and more elegant forms than the preceding animals. Prof. Henri Milne-Edwards was of the opinion that the three races of hemione were only local varieties of a single species (Equus hemionus).

North of the central plateau of Asia, the steppes of Turkistan are prolonged so as to form the Desert of Gobi, and again farther east into the Desert of Dzungaria. This region, situated immediately south of Siberia, from which it is separated by the valley of the Amoor, and north of the Thian-Shan Mountains, which separate it from China, remained almost entirely unexplored till the time when it passed from the dominion of the Chinese to that of the Russians. In this desert region the celebrated traveler Prejevalski discovered in 1881, during his last journey into central Asia, a wild horse distinct both from the tarpan and from the different varieties of the hemione.

The wild horses of this species, called kertag by the Kirghiz and takki by the Mongols, live in small herds of from five to fifteen individuals, under the direction of an old stallion. They are very suspicious, and rarely allow themselves to be approached within gunshot. They are extremely swift and easily escape the best-mounted hunters. After several fruitless pursuits, Prejevalski succeeded in bringing down a three-year-old stallion, whose remains are now to be seen in the Museum of the Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg, and which is the type of the Equus Prejevalskii of the naturalist Poliakoff.

The wild horse of Dzungaria is an animal the size of the hemione and more robust in its proportions, in which it resembles the pony. Its head is large, with ears smaller than those of the hemione, the shoulders thick, especially in the male, the limbs robust and stubbier than those of the hemiones and the asses. The mane is short and straight, and the moderately long tail is terminated by a tuft of long hairs in much more abundant supply than in the tail of the hemiones. It has warts on the hind-legs as well as on the fore-legs—a peculiarity of the horse, distinguishing it from the other species of the genus, which have warts only on the fore-legs. The hoofs are full like those of the horse, and not compressed as in the other species; and the lower parts of the legs are furnished with long hairs falling to the crown of the hoof, a feature which the hemiones lack.