286 BRITISH MAMMAIS 



Sus scrofa. The Wild Boar 



The appearance of this animal, with its thick, bristling coat, 

 hairy ears, long snout, and recurved upper tusks, is well known 

 to most of my readers ; for, although the Wild Boar has been 

 extinct in these islands, at any rate, since the seventeenth century, 

 it has been so often exhibited in menageries and reintroduced 

 into parks that its aspect is nearly as familiar to the people of 

 the United Kingdom as to those nations on the Continent of 

 Europe where it still exists in a wild state. The present range 

 of the wild boar consists of most of the countries of Europe 

 (except Great Britain and Scandinavia), Asia Minor, and North 

 Africa. In North-east Africa, in India, Southern Asia, and the 

 islands of the Malay Archipelago, to the verge of Australia, it 

 is replaced by closely allied forms. It is supposed that the 

 domestic pig is principally derived from Sus scrofa^ with, no 

 doubt (as is the case with so many domestic animals), inter- 

 mixture with Oriental forms. Domestic pigs, with rare 

 exceptions, differ from the wild form in one important particular : 

 the young are born without those striking white markings — 

 longitudinal stripes and occasional spots — which are found in 

 the young of all pigs except the babirusa and the wart hog. 

 But occasionally, even in domestic pigs, especially where the 

 breed is an old one, young are born that exhibit faint traces of 

 these markings. The greyhound pig of the west of Ireland, 

 now only lingering — if not already extinguished by the Board 

 of Agriculture — on the islands of Aran, is a peculiar-looking 

 creature, much more like a wild than a domestic animal — lean 

 and lank, and with a very long head and snout. The author is 

 not able to give his readers a photograph of the greyhound pig 

 of Aran, but through the kindness of Mr. Robert Welch, of 

 Belfast, he reproduces a photograph of a pig which is a hybrid 

 between the greyhound type and pigs of improved breeds. This 

 is a young animal, and in the photograph there is the appearance 

 of palish markings like those to be seen in the young of the 

 wild boar. The relatively naked nature of the domestic pig 



