558 ON THE DOMESTIC PIG OF 



Islands/ p. 429, may perhaps be such a breed as Professor Riiti- 

 meyer sugg-ests, in his later paper (p. 168, see also p. 148), should 

 be looked for in Eastern Europe or Western Asia or in fossil 

 forms ^. 



Mr. G. Dobson, F.L.S., in a letter to me of date Jan. 15, 1877, 

 writes that the young of the pig of the Andaman and of the 

 Nicobar Islands are striped. 



Tho Rev. C. Spencer Bubb informs me that the young Borneo 

 domestic pig is sometimes striped and sometimes not, whilst the 

 young Chinese pig is never striped; and he adds that there are 

 certainly two domestic breeds in Borneo. 



DESCRIPTION OF PLATES IV AND V. 



Fig. I. Orbito-lacrymal region of partially reconstructed skull of Sus scrofa, var. 

 domesticus, wanting nasals and intermaxillaries, from late Celtic interment at Arras, 

 East Riding of Yorkshire. Oxford Museum. 



It is, as Nathusius has well pointed out, I.e. p. 147, by no means always easy to 

 be absolutely certain as to the question whether a particular pig's skull belonged to a 

 wild or to a domesticated individual. The difficulty is increased when the animal is 

 young, as in this case, the last molar having only just come into use, and the animal 

 consequently being only about i8 months old, and when as the small size generally, 

 and especially the small size of the third molar and the canine, may be taken, I 

 believe, to indicate that it is of the female sex. It is true that the paucity of cusps 

 in the molars has been taken as indicating the wild state ; a comparison, however, of 

 the male and female molar series in Sus cristatus has suggested to me that the greater 

 size of the molars really depends upon a greater supply of blood, such as the male 

 molars would .get, by virtue of sharing the greater supply lavished on the canines, and 

 such as a well-fed domesticated animal's molars would get in common with all its 

 other structures and organs. The comparatively vertical occipital squama is one main 

 anatomical point in favour of this skull having belonged to a domesticated specimen ; 

 the pterygoid, on the other hand, has much of the obliquity characteristic of the wild 

 Sus scrofa, var. ferus. When we consider, however, that this skull was found in an 

 interment containing a human body, together with portions of another skull of a pig 

 of the same age, the probability that it belonged to a tame individual appears to be 

 very great. The subjoined measurements show that the lacrymal bone, though not 



* I suspect that latitude has more to do with the production of such varieties than 

 longitude, and still operating causes more than geological. One of these causes is 

 suggested by the words of Varro, ii. 4. 13, cited by Bureau de la Malle, ' Economic 

 politique des Remains/ ii. p. 149 : * Porcique nati hieme, fiunt exiles propter 

 frigora.' 



