öö ON THE MALAYAN AND PAPUAN PIGS 



(the Malay Archipelago, vol. II, p. 141) wrote: »Pigs 

 are spread all over the Archipelago , even to several of 

 the smaller islands , and in many cases the species are 

 peculiar. It is evident, therefore, that they have some 

 natural means of dispersal. There is a popular idea that 

 pig cannot swim , but Sir Charles Lyell has shown that 

 this is a mistake. In his Principles of Geology he addu- 

 ces evidence to show that pigs have swum, many miles at 

 sea, and are able to swim with great ease and swiftness. 

 I have myself seen a wild pig swimming across the arm 

 of the sea that separates Singapore from the Peninsula of 

 Malacca , and we thus have explained the curious fact , 

 that of all the large mammals of the Indian region , pigs 

 alone extend beyond the Moluccas and as far as New- 

 Guinea, although it is somewhat curious that they have 

 not found their way to Australia." 



De Blainville (Osteographie, Stis , p. 172) says: »Pen- 

 nant a fait I'observation que , dans I'Archipel Indien , le 

 Cochon de Chine avait passé souvent a la nage , d'ile en 

 lie, jusque dans la Nouvelle Guinee, oü il n'en existait 

 pas originellement . . . qu'ensuite ils ont emigre aux Nou- 

 velles Hebrides, puis et successivement aux iles des Amis, 

 de la Société et des Marquises." 



Finally it is well known that Pigs are very apt to pro- 

 duce varieties, by domestication, combined with differences 

 in food and climate; so Fitzinger (Ueber die Racen des 

 zahmen oder Hausschweines) summed up sixty distinct races 

 of Sus scrofa , the supposed origin of our domesticated Pigs ; 

 d'Albertis (P. Z. S. L. 1875, p. 531) reports: »that he 

 has not seen two specimens of Sus papuensis , in the Yule- 

 island , alike amongst a hundred", so that we may sup- 

 pose that also among wild pigs there is a great variation 

 among the individuals belonging to a given species. 



Now we may suppose the so-called species of wild Pigs 

 to be offsprings from one ^) or from more species , or main- 



1) Vide A. Milne Edwards, Mammiferes du Tibet, 1868—74, p. 379: «Je 

 serais assez porté a penser que les nombreux Sangliers asiatiques constituent 



Notes from ttie Leyden Miusetacn , Vol. XIII. 



