ON THE DOMESTIC PIG OF PKEHISTORIC TIMES IN BRITAIN. 519 



earliest, possibly the very earliest, of animals which man domes- 

 ticated ; and the question of the source or sources whence it was 

 derived has consequently an ' ethnographisch-archaologische Bedeu- 

 tung' (to use the words of Fischer ^, in his analogous investigation 

 as to the sources whence the jade and nephrite of early European 

 times were procured) of the first importance. Gibbon^ has re- 

 marked that ' man is the only animal which can live and multiply 

 in every country from the equator to the poles ; ' and he has pro- 

 ceeded to aver that ' the hog seems to approach nearest to our 

 species in that privilege.' As a matter of fact. Gibbon here, as so 

 often elsewhere, was very nearly though not quite exact : the 

 northward limit of the range of the wild boar may perhaps be 

 taken as somewhere between ^^°^ and 60° N., and that of the tame 

 pig as 64° N._, whilst that of the common fowl * extends probably 

 a little, and that of the dog certainly much, further northward. 

 The mention of the Australian dingo suggests another amendment 

 of the somewhat cynical remark of our great historian. 



Secondly, a very useful light is thrown, or may be thrown, upon 

 the question of the extent to which the influences of civilisation 

 act upon our own species, by the analogous enquiry into the effects 

 which domestication has been able to produce upon an animal 

 linked so closely with ourselves in a many-sided commensalism. 

 The least pleasant aspect of that commensalism, that, namely, which 

 is presented to us by the facts of our solidarity with swine in 

 the maintenance of the alternation of the forms of life of Taenia 

 and Trickina, must, it may be remarked, upon any view of the 

 origination of the four species concerned, force upon our attention 



^ H. Fischer, ' Nephrit und Jadeit nach ihren mineralogischen Eigenschaften.' 

 Stuttgart, 1875. For similar investigations as to the sources of the cultivated plants 

 and the weeds of prehistoric times, see Keller's * Lake-Dwellings,' translated by Lee, 

 pp. 303 and 343. 



2 'Decline and Fall of the Eoman Empire,' chap. ix. note 9. p. 352. Smith's 

 edition. 



3 For the northward range of the wild boar and the tame pig, see Brandt and 

 Eatzeburg, ' Med. Zool.' p. 89 ; Fitzinger, ' Sitzungsberichte d. Akad. d. Wiss. Wien,' 

 1864, p. 387 ; Radde, ' Eeise im Stlden von Ostsibirien,' i. 236; Zimmermann, 'G-eo- 

 graphische Geschichte,' i. 189, 1778. Middendorf, in his ' Sibirische Eeise,' p. 1062, 

 1867, gives 56° N. lat. as the extreme actual northward limit of the wild boar. 

 (Since I wrote as above, Mr. H. N. Moseley has procured for me a skull of a tame pig 

 from Stene i Bo, Lofoten Islands, 2° above the arctic circle.) 



* For the northward range of the domestic fowl, Gallus domesticus, see Brandt and 

 Eatzeburg, I. c. p. 150. 



