-* Fauna : Mammals 



disposition, much dreaded by the natives. Curiously enough, 

 Mr. Maitland Pye-Smith, who resided for some months in the 

 eastern part of Liberia on behalf of the Monrovian Rubber 

 Company, wrote to me that in the Kelipo country the natives 

 asserted the existence in the surrounding forest of a large 

 black pig, which they described as being five or six feet long. 

 Mr. Pye-Smith was struck with the resemblance that their 



278. THE REn KIVER HOG (POTAMOCHOiRUS I'ORCUS) 



stories offered to the description which had just reached him 

 through The Field newspaper of the forest pig of Elastern 

 Equatorial Africa — Mylochcerus meinertzhagem. This animal, 

 which is perhaps the biggest of existing pigs,' was described 

 recently by Mr. Oldfield Thomas as being of a type offering 

 relationships both to the river hogs of Africa {Potamochcerus) 



' Unless Mr. Walter Rothschild's " Colossochoerus " of the Congo Forest 

 exists and is the size he estimates — that of a rhinoceros. 



717 



