620 ON THE DOMESTIC PIG OF 



considerations of the very greatest gravity. To take somewhat 

 lower ground, from such a study as that of the variations of the pig 

 under domestication, we may obtain safe criteria for estimating the 

 relative eifects of food, whether scanty or abundant, of early or late 

 exercise of the sexual functions, and of intercrossing, upon the 

 formation of facial characteristics. The importance of not over- 

 looking the influences of sex and of age is nowhere more forcibly 

 pressed upon our attention than in an examination of a series of 

 skulls of Suidae. It has often been overlooked in disquisitions on 

 the skulls of Hominidae. 



Thirdly, whether the question at issue as regards man between 

 the Polygenists and the Monogenists will, as has been predicted 

 (Darwin, 'Descent of Man,' ed. 2nd, p. i8o, 1874), 'die a silent 

 and unobserved death ' or not, there can be no doubt that illustra- 

 tions of the argumentations whereby that question has been, or 

 ought to have been, dealt with, can be furnished nowhere more 

 fitly and fully than in an enquiry into the distinctness or non- 

 distinctness of the various races of swine. 



Three distinct views have been advocated as to the relationship 

 of the domestic to the wild swine, Sus scrofa, y2iX.ferus. We may 

 take as the first of these that advocated by Professor Steenstrup ^, 

 and stated by him in the following plain words : — 



•II n'y a pas de transition k observer entre les sangliers et les plus anciens 

 cochons domestiques.' 



In this view Professor Steenstrup will find Mr. Samuel Sidney 

 coincide in the opening sentences of his work ' On the Pig ;' and a 

 view very closely similar to it was put tentatively forward in the 

 year 1821 by a savant who combined the functions of a Professor 

 of Materia Medica with those of Director of the Botanical Garden 

 at Berlin, Professor Link, in the following words, to be found in 

 his work ' Die Urwelt und das Alterthum,' i. p. 192 : — 



* Das zabme Schwein stammt nach alien Naturforschem von den wilden Schweinen 

 ab, und auch die Alten waren schon dieser Meinung "^ ; doch scheint mir die Sache 

 keinesweges entschieden. Die Starke, Grrosse und Farbe des wilden Schweines wiirden 

 keinen Unterschied machen, da die wilden Thiere starker, grosser, und diinkler 

 gefarbt sind, als die zahmen, aber die grossen Hauer des wilden Ebers scheinen doch 

 nicht bloss Vergrosserung zu sein. Die Feltdecke des zahmen Schweines findet sie 



^ * Bulletin du Congrbs International d'Arch^ologie pr^historique k Copenhague en 

 1869,' p. 163. 

 ^ Varro, * De Re Rustica/ 1. ii. c. 1. 



