526 ON THE DOMESTIC PIG OF 



The wild 8us papuensis has been found by Europeans, as we are 

 informed by M. K,. P. Lesson (' Voyage de la Coquille,' 1826, vol. i. 

 p. 176), to be more thoroughly domesticable than the half- wild 

 state in which some of the natives are content to leave it would 

 have led us to expect, and to set up relations of mutual amity, not 

 only with the human, but also with canine companions. 



As regards the Aethiopian region, the wild hog is reported to us 

 by Dr. Barth ^ as consorting on terms of perfect amity, and, indeed, 

 intimacy, with other domesticated animals than the dog, and also 

 with the natives. These are his words relating to a district in 

 Central Africa : — 



* Naked young lads were splashing and playing about in the water together with 

 wild hogs in the greatest harmony ; never in any part of Negroland have I seen this 

 animal in s»ch numbers as here about the Sh<Crf. Calves and goats were pasturing in 

 the fields with wild hogs in the midst of them.' 



It is impossible to be perfectly certain what wild hog this may 

 have been ; still it can scarcely have been any other than Sus sen- 

 naariensis, which has been supposed (see Darwin, ' Domestication,' 

 i. p. 71, 2nd ed.) by J. W. Schiitz to have been the parent stock of 

 Sus scrofa, var. palustris, of Riitimeyer, but underneath the entry of 

 which, in the British Museum Catalogue of 1869, p. 33 8^ I find 

 the following note : — 



♦ Dr. Murie says he has often seen and eaten the true wild boar of the genus Sm 

 in A^frica, as well as the Potamochoerus, on the west coast. I have never seen any, 

 or the skull of one.' 



Like Dr. Gray, I have had no quite satisfactory opportunities for 

 forming an opinion, such as inspection of authentic skulls gives, as 

 to the relations of S2is setmaariensis to Sus scrqfa ; but whilst going 

 over the series of skulls of Suidae in the British Museum, I came 

 upon one which, though entered under the head of Potamochoerus 

 a/ricanus, ought, I make no doubt, to be entered under the head of 

 Sus sennaariensis, or, as I should prefer to call it, Sus scrqfa, var. 

 africanus. This skull is numbered 715 «; and of it we have the 

 following history from Dr. Gray ('Proc. Zool. Soc' 1868, p. '>^^\ 

 Brit. Mus. Catalogue, 1869, p. 342): — 



•A skull without its lower jaw (715 a) was brought home by Captain Alexander 

 from, his expedition to Damara, and presented to the British Museum. It is recorded 

 in Mr. Gerrard's *' Catalogue of the Bones in the British Museum " as Sus capensis 



1 Referred to by Nathusius, p. 147, I. c. j or see his ' Travels in Central Africa,' 

 vol. iii. p. 311, 1857. 



