PREHISTOKIC TIMES IN BRITAIN. 523 



that of the European wild boar, though this has been laid down 

 by Colonel Sykes (' Proc. Zool. Soc' 1831, p. 30) as being* the 

 state of the case ; for in measuring the relative lengths of the nasal 

 and fronto-parietal regions of the Indian wild hog, I have come 

 to think that precisely the reverse of this statement is usually, 

 though not invariably, the case, the Indian hog having the nasal 

 bones shorter relatively to the rest of the roof-bones of the skull 

 than Sus scrofa, var. ferns. Neither do I agree with Colonel 

 Sykes in holding that the straightness of the plane of the forehead 

 will differentiate the Indian at least from modern European wild 

 boars : some concavity is produced in the mesial contour-line of 

 large prehistoric wild boars, not by any- angulation at the junc- 

 tion of the facial with the cranial bones, as in modern tame swine 

 of highly cultivated breeds, but by the upgrowth of the back por- 

 tion of the skull roof-bones and the occipital transverse crest ; 

 modern European wild boars, however, which are much inferior 

 in size to their prehistoric and, indeed, to their mediaeval pre- 

 decessors, have the fronto-parietal and nasal lines forming one 

 unbroken straight line. 



Colonel Sykes's words, ' Tail never curled or spirally twisted,' 

 appear to me (I.e. p. 11) to be said of the tame variety of the 

 Indian hog ; but though Eitzinger (' Sitzungsberichte Akad. Wiss. 

 Wien,' 1864) specifies the form in which the caudal vertebrae are 

 carried as one of the specific marks in each of his descriptions of 

 the Suidae^ and though Linnaeus uses the words (Ed. xiii. ' Syst. 

 Nat.' p. 65) 'Cauda sinistrorsum recur vata' for differentiating Canis 

 familians from Canis lujous^ s. Canis cauda incurvata, I am inclined 

 to think too much weight may be laid upon this point. 



Thoroughly trustworthy figures of the European wild boar, 

 such as that given by Schreber (^ Saugethiere,' taf. cccxx), or that 

 in Buffon's 'Hist. Nat.' v. pi. xiv, and Ered. Cuvier, ' Hist. Mamm.,' 

 represent it as having the root and tip of its tail lying evenly be- 

 tween two points ; though the Vienna zoologist just referred to says 

 of this appendage in this animal, 



' Schwanz geringelt, kurz, nicht ganz bis zum Fersengelenke reichend.' 



And as an indication of the trifling value of such a point as this, 

 it may be remarked that of two female specimens of the very well- 

 marked species, Sus iarbatus, one young, the other old, figured by 



