Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/646

628 characteristic is the color of the pelage, a pale gray, almost white, passing into dun on the head and neck, and blending insensibly on the flanks with the pure white of the belly and limbs. The mane, the brush of the tail, and the long hairs of the lower legs and hoofs, are black. There is no trace of the dark dorsal stripe running from the mane to the tail which is characteristic of the hemione. The hairy covering is long and undulating, especially in the rigorous winter of that northern region.

The external appearance of the animal, as may be inferred from our drawing (Fig. 1), is very like that of the small horse or



pony. It has been assumed, principally on the ground of the form of the tail, that Prejevalski's horse is a hemione. This opinion does not appear to us tenable; it is evidently founded on a begging of the question, because we have so far been ignorant of the real form of the tail of the primitive horse. The study of other wild species of the genus seems to indicate, on the other hand, that the brush form is characteristic of all the wild horses, the plumy tail and mane being acquisitions of domesticity, like the drooping ears of dogs, pigs, and goats. The tail of Prejevalski's horse is, moreover, more brushy than that of the hemiones. Proofs of another kind are derived from paleontology. There are among the representations of Equidœ of the Quaternary epoch, engraved by primitive men on reindeer-horn and ivory, discovered by M. Piette in the caves of the south of France, some very clearly representing a horse with a brush tail and short ears like those of the Prejevalski horse.