16 THE HOG. 



they exist in a wild 01 domesticated state throughout the greater 

 part of the known world. 



Martin says : That the wild hog is the source of our ordinary 

 domestic race cannot be disputed ; and as little can we doubt its 

 extreme antiquity. The hog has survived changes which have swept 

 multitudes of pachydermatous animals from the surface of our earth. 

 It still maintains an independent existence in Europe, and presents the 

 same characters, both physical and moral, which the earliest writers, 

 whether sacred or profane, have faithfully delineated. The domestic 

 stock has indeed been more or less modified by long culture, but 

 the wild species remains unaltered, insomuch that the fossil relics of 

 its primitive ancestors may be identified by comparison with the 

 bones of their descendants. 



The fossil relics of the genus sus have been found in the miocene 

 and also in the pliocene deposits of the tertiary system of Lyell. 

 Kaup, for example, has described fossil bones of the genus sus from 

 the miocene Eppelsheim sand, in which they were associated with 

 those of the mastodon and dinotherium ; and MM. Croizet and 

 Jobert, in their account of the fossils of Auvergne, describe ana 

 figure the fossil bones of a species of hog, which, as was satisfacto- 

 rily proved, must have lived coexistent with and on the same locality 

 as extinct elephants and mastodons. According to these geologists, 

 the facial part of the fossil hog discovered by them is relatively 

 shorter than in the existing species ; hence, under the supposition 

 that their fossil animal might have been distinct, they conferred upon 

 it the title of aper (sus) Avernensis. How far this distinctiveness 

 is real, yet remains to be seen ; at all events, Professor Owen, in 

 his valuable work on British fossil mammalia, places the sus Aver- 

 nensis, with a query, as one of the synonyms of the cochon fossile of 

 Cuvier, sus scrofa fossilis of Von Meyer {Palceologica, p. 80,) sus 

 priscus of Goldfuss (Nova Acta Acad. Nat. Car., t. xi., pt. 2, p. 482,) 

 the fossil hog of Dr. Buckland, and the sus scrofa, Owen, in Report 

 of British Association, 1843, p. 228. 



With reference to the fossil remains of the hog. Professor Owen 

 thus writes : " When Cuvier communicated his memoir on the fossil 

 bones of the hog to the French Academy, in 1809, he had met with 

 no specimens from formations less recent than the mosses, or turba- 

 ries and peat-bogs, and knew not that they had been found in the 

 drift associated with the bones of elephants. He repeats this obser- 

 vation in the edition of the Ossemens Fossiles, in 1822 ; but in the 

 additions to the last volume, puolished in 1825, Cuvier cites the dis- 

 covery by M. Bourdet de la Nievre of a fossil jaw of a sus, on the 

 east bank of the lake of Neufchatel, and a fragment of the uppei 

 jaw from the cavern at Sundwick, in Westphalia, described by Pro- 

 fessor Goldfuss. 



"Dr. Buckland include* the molar teeth and a large tusk of 



