530 ON THE DOMESTIC PIG OF 



before the period of maturity; and that the offsprings of such 

 unions, whether both of the parents or only one be immature, are 

 likely to be smaller in size as well as fewer in number, needs no 

 argument. 



Whilst no a priori probability can be gathered from any greater 

 domesticability in favour of the claims of either European, Asiatic, 

 or African Sus to be the exclusive source of our domestic pigs, and 

 whilst mere size equally fails to differentiate these races, the point 

 of the relation between the length and the height respectively of 

 the lacrymal bone on which Nathusius has laid such weight 

 (' Schweineschadel,' passim et pp. 9, 10, 83, 91, 92, 175), and to 

 which Mr. Darwin has assigned so much importance ('Animals and 

 Plants under Domestication,' vol. i. p. 70, ed. 1875), though in the 

 immense majority of cases enabling us at once to differentiate the 

 skulls of 8ms crisfatus, as indeed of the other Asiatic pigs without 

 facial warts, from those of Sus scrofa^ var. ferns, also sometimes 

 fails us. Having measured a very considerable number of skulls of 

 Sus cristatiis from very various parts of India, and having invari- 

 ably found them to have the orbital border of the lacrymal shorter 

 than, or at most only just equal in length to the malar, and bear- 

 ing in mind the constant reference made by Nathusius to the mor- 

 phological and classilicatory value of this proportional difference in 

 the tame variety, the so-called Sus indicus, I was entirely unable to 

 understand how that author could say (/. c. p. 185) that two skulls 

 of Sus cristatus furnished to him by Mr. E. Gerrard differed from 

 skulls of S21S scrofa, var. ferns, only in being smaller altogether. 

 But after measuring the skulls from Sir Walter Elliot's collection 

 and those in the British Museum, with the result of feeling certain 

 that, from the contour, proportions, and, in adult males, the texture 

 and sculpturing, together with the lacrymal of Bus cristatus, it was 

 always possible to distinguish such skulls from those of our wild 

 boar, I came, in the Royal College of Surgeons, upon a skull 

 which, whilst possessing certain other peculiarities (to be hereafter 

 detailed) as distinctive, more or less, of Sus cristatus, did combine 

 with them the long lacrymal of Sus scrqfa, var. ferus. This skull 

 is numbered 3251 a, and was pointed out to me by Professor 

 Flower, with his often experienced kindness, as being a skull of 

 Sus cristatus, which, together with two others, with the same 

 appearance as to textural condition, had been brought out of the 



