174 



NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



good recovery. As regards the story of the babirusa 

 sleeping suspended by his tusks, it seems that these 

 weapons are but loosely attached to the skull, as 

 demonstrated by actual experiment in the deadhouse 

 at the Zoological Gardens. 



The babirusa may have been the four-horned boar 

 (iWer/oa/ce/ooj?) of Elian ; Pliny more definitely notices 

 a boar horned on the forehead, which he supposed 

 to inhabit India (lib. viii. c. 52); Cosmes in the sixth 

 century mentions it under the name of Kotpe\a</>os or 

 hog-deer. 1 Sailors in later times trading among the 

 Moluccas brought over many of the curious tusked 

 skulls. At least one specimen appears to have been 

 amongst the " Rarities belonging to the Royal 

 Society and preserved at Gresham College " 

 described by Grew in 1686. 



No less than ten of the College of Surgeons series 

 were obtained in the lifetime of John Hunter (died 

 1793) ; this is remarkable indeed considering the very 

 local range of the species and the uncertainty of 

 travel in those days. The first living examples seen 

 in Europe were a pair received in 1820 at the Jardin 

 des Plantes in Paris, and perhaps it was this pair 

 that produced a young one in the Paris collection. 



It appears that as late as 1827 only the head of the 

 animal was known in this country. Hamilton Smith 



1. Perhaps in allusion to the antler-like (?) tusks; compare the 

 Malay name babirusa, babi hog, rusa deer. Deer^o^ would have 

 been a much more appropriate title ; for the babirusa has been compared 

 to a stag in lightness, and justly so. The true cervine hog-deer has 

 nothing to do with the babirusa. 



