296 EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN. [CHAP. vm. 



represent the extremes, from the interbreeding of which 

 our present domestic hogs are derived. The first of 

 these is considered by Professor Butimeyer and Mr. 

 Darwin to have been originally wild in Europe, because 

 it is found along with wild animals at the bottom of 

 peat-bogs, and because its bones are traversed by more 

 strongly defined ridges and grooves, as in the case of 

 wild as distinguished from domestic animals. It is 

 certainly true that the muscular development, rendered 

 necessary by the struggle for life between wild animals, 

 enables us to distinguish the wolf from the dog, or the 

 wild from the domestic oxen ; but it is not a sure guide 

 to the definition of the wild from the domestic hog, 

 since the looseness of the texture in the bones of the 

 hogs, and the absence of strongly pronounced ridges, are 

 almost as great as in the elephants. Professor Etiti- 

 meyer's test will not, moreover, enable us to discriminate 

 between the animals which have been aboriginally wild 

 and those which have escaped from the yoke of man to 

 revert to the feral conditions of life. In the latter case, 

 the animal must exert its muscular powers in acquiring 

 food and in defending itself against its enemies, by 

 which the points d'appui of the muscles must be 

 correspondingly strengthened. Nor can its aboriginal 

 wildness be inferred from its wide distribution through 

 Europe, because, at the present time, the swine intro- 

 duced into North and South America and Australia by 

 the colonists are gradually spreading over those countries. 

 Under favourable conditions of life there is every reason 

 to believe that it would in like manner have become wild 

 in Europe. The enormous abundance of its remains in the 

 Neolithic pile-dwellings, coupled with the pig-sties, and 

 stores of acorns and beech-nuts found at Eobenhausen, 



