. OMNIVORA. 345- 



The snout is truncated and cylindrical, fitted for turning up 

 the ground, and is capable of considerable movement. The 

 skin is more or less abundantly covered with hair, and the 

 tail is very short, or represented only by a tubercle. 



As represented at the present day, the family Stiida is a 

 very well-marked and distinctly circumscribed group of 

 Artiodactyles ; but we meet with a large number of extinct 

 types, commencing in the Eocene Tertiary, which show more 

 or less generalised characters, and render it difficult or im- 

 possible, in the present state of our knowledge, to sharply 

 separate off the family from the HippojootavtidcB on the one 

 hand, and the Anoplotheridm on the other. There are, 

 moreover, extinct types with many Suilline af&nities, which 

 show points of resemblance to the Euminants ; and. there 

 are others which it may be best to place provisionally in 

 separate groups. 



The genus Sus, comprising the living Wild Boar and 

 domestic Pig {Sus scrofa), may be taken as the type of the 

 family ; and its permanent dental formula is — 



.3—3 1—1 3—3 3—3 ,^ 



% ; c ; «??i ; m = 40. 



3—3 1—1 3—3 3—3 



The lower incisors are inclined forwards (fig. 641); the 

 canines of the males are tusk-like ; and the molars have 

 broad crowns, with two transverse ridges (three or more in 

 number in the last molar), which are divided into rounded 

 tubercles. In the Peccaries [Dicotyles), the leading Suilline 

 type of the New World, the incisors are reduced to four in 

 number in the upper jaw ; and the molars, though still 

 distinctly of the bunodont type, present more consjDicuous 

 transverse ridges, which are less markedly tuberculated than 

 in Sus (fig. 642). On the other hand, in some of the older 

 Tertiary Suida we find that the molar teeth exhibit char- 

 acters intermediate between the bunodont and selenodont 

 types, thus leading us through the family of the Oreodonts 

 to the true Euminants. 



In the genus Sus there are four toes to all the feet, but 

 the third and fourth digits form a functionally developed 

 and symmetrical pair, while the second and fifth digits are 



