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From Alexander Dick-Cunyngham   12 March 1879

Karachi, Sind,

12th. March 1879

Dear Sir,

In your Variation of Animals and Plants, Vol II p 190—you say:—

According to Varro, the wild ass was formerly caught and crossed with the tame animal to improve the breed—1

It may interest you to know that this plan is still carried out in this part of the country. A wild ass, caught in the Runn of Kutch, was kept for many years by the late Khan Bahadoor Murad Khan at his estate on the Hubb river 20 miles from here, and a large number of donkeys were bred by him— He also got some very fine mules out of Beloochee mares—2 He was very savage and if ever he got loose he at once killed all the he asses about the place

A female wild ass was lately caught near Bawalpur, and on Murad Khan’s death they were both sent to the Calcutta Zoological Gardens, where they are still—3

Apologising for intruding upon you, | I am, | yours faithfully | A, Dick-Cunyngham

1
See Variation 2d ed. 2: 190–1. CD referred to Pallas 1777 as his source for the statement of Marcus Terentius Varro.
2
The Rann of Kutch is a large area of salt marshes, mostly in Gujarat, India, extending into the southern tip of Pakistan. The Hubb (Hab) river is in south-east Baluchistan, Pakistan, and is the source for the Karachi water supply. Khan Bahadoor (Bahadur) was a formal title conferred on Muslim subjects of the British Indian Empire; Khan Bahadur Murad Khan received a large tract of land bordering the Hab river from the British government in 1859 (Hughes comp. 1876, p. 183). The Baluchi horse is a breed native to Baluchistan and Sind, noted for its turned-in ears (Hendricks 2007, pp. 61–2).
3
Bawalpur (now Bahawalpur) is a city in the south Punjab province of Pakistan, formerly in the princely state of Bahawalpur in British India. The Alipore Zoological Gardens in Calcutta (now Kolkata) had opened in 1876 (S. Walker 2001).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11926,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11926