PREHISTOKIC TIMES IN BRITAIN. 527 



(p. 277). It is the skull of an adult animal, with the crown of the grinders much 

 worn. It is probably the skull of a female, as it agrees with all the characters of 

 Potamoclioerus ; but it has only a well-marked ridge across the upper part of the 

 base of the sheath of the upper canine, and the upper margin of the nose is not 

 dilated nor swollen.' 



When I took this skull into my hands I was uncharitable enough 

 to suggest to Mr. Gerrard that it was a skull of Sus cristatus 

 wrongfully assigned to Damara as its habitat. Leaving this low 

 ground, I came to think that it might have come from some 

 descendant of pigs of the Sus indicus breed which had run wild at 

 the Cape and reverted to the Sus cristatus form. But I have now 

 no doubt that this is a skull of such a wild boar as those of which 

 Dr. Murie speaks ; and if this be so, the Sus of Africa is not readily 

 to be distinguished from Sus cristatus, at least by cranial characters. 

 Dr. Gray^ under the heading Sus sennaariensis ('Proc. Zool. Soc' I. c, 

 p. 32, and British Mus. 'Catalogue,' 1869, p. 338), suggests that 

 the skull figured by De Blainville (' Osteographie/ tab. v) may have 

 belonged to a Sus sennaariensis. It is described as ^ Sus scrqfa 

 aegi/pti ' by De Blainville ; but, as far as I can judge from the 

 drawing, it has all the characters, to be hereinafter detailed, which 

 distinguish Sus scrofa, var. ferus, from Sus cristatus, and conse- 

 quently from such a skull as that labelled 715^, and brought home 

 by Captain Alexander. Of course there is no a priori difficulty in 

 the way of our supposing that the wild boar either of Palestine or 

 of Algiers, both well-known animals, may have extended into 

 Egypt, a country which has so much both of the Palaearctic and 

 of the Aethiopian fauna in occupation of its territory. Anyhow 

 Dr. Murie and Dr. Barth are sufficient witnesses to the fact that a 

 true Sus is found in Africa south of the Atlas and Sahara. I cannot, 

 therefore, accept Mr. Wallace's statement (' Geograph. Distrib. of 

 Animals,' vol. i. pp. 253, 286-322) to the effect that a true Sus is 

 not to be found in the Aethiopian region. The mistake made, and 

 handsomely acknowledged, by Fitzinger (' Sitz. Acad. Wiss. Wien,' 

 1864, Bd. 49, i. p. 389), in naming certain young specimens of Sus 

 sennaariensis by the name which Fr. Cuvier had given to the masked 

 boar, supposing them to be the young of that species, would not 

 have occurred with adult specimens. What Fr. Cuvier called Sus 

 larvatus, we know as Potamochoerus africanus ; to save further con- 

 fusion of names and errors of fact, it would be well to drop the 

 name Sus larvatus altogether. Potamochoerus , which I observed to 



