KIANG, the Dzightai or Jaghtai, is in all probability the true Equus heinionus of Pallas. It has been often confounded with the Gor-khar or wild ass, though they differ considerably in appearance, and inhabit countries with very dis similar climates. The kiang exists in the high cold regions and mountains of Tibet, the Gor-khar in the heated sandy plains of Sind and Baluchi stan. The kiang is found in numbers nearly in the same localities as the yak ; it does not, how ever, go up the mountains so high as the yak, but the range of its distribution is greater than that of the yak. The kiang are abundant near the Pangong Tso, and between Chusal and Hanle. They roam on plains 14,000 to 15,000 feet above the sea. They are shy. The greatest elevation where the Messrs. Schlagentweit found the kiang, was 18,600 English feet, whilst they traced yaks as high up as 19,300 feet.
The, natives of Ladakh deny the possibility of any approach at domestication of the kiang, and state that young always die in confinement. Major Hay sent a kiang to the Zoological Society of London. He mentioned that the mares are highly esteemed by the Tibetans for breeding with the thoroughbred Chinese stallion, the produce being a horse with great powers of endurance, and which, on this account, are much in request by the Zhakpa, a predatory race who inhabit the mountains. The chief food of this species appears to consist of the stunted fescue grasser, common on the plains and mountains, together with a red flowered vetch, possibly Oxytropis chiliophylla of llooker. The speed of the kiang is great ; its action seems to consist of a long step or trot, which is never varied.
The regions where the yak and the kiang are found are, in a zoological point of view, among the most remarkable and interesting of our globe. The highest absolute elevation coincides here, it is true, with the greatest height of the snow-line, or rather it causes the snow-line to be higher. But those large, high plateaux and regions, though free from snow and ice in summer, remain a desert throughout the year. The amount of vegetation ou them is less than it is in the desert between Suez and Cairo in Egypt. Nevertheless these high sterile regions are inhabited by numer ous herds of large quadrupeds. Species of wild sheep, antelopes, and a few canine animals, chiefly wolves, as well as hares, are abundant. The herbivorous animals find here their food only by travelling daily over vast tracts of land, as there are only a few fertile spots, the greater part being completely barren. The great scarcity of vegeta tion, particularly the entire absence of mosses and lichens, has a very different effect, though an indirect one, on the occurrence of birds. Those small plants are the chief abodes of insects : the want of mosses and lichens, coinciding with a total absence of humus, limits, therefore, to its minimum the occurrence of insects, the exclusive food of small birds in all eictremely elevated parts of the globe, where grains are no more found. The Scblagentweits, indeed, travelling twenty consecutive days between heights of 14,000 to 18,200 feet; met only with three individuals be longing to a species of Fringilla, but occasionally vultures were met with.