Dr. J. E. Gray on Pigs and their Skulls. 431 



L. — Observations on Pigs (Sus, Linnaeus] Setifera, Illiger) 

 and their Skulls^ with the Description of a new Species. 

 By Dr. J. E. Gray, F.K.S. &c. 



The Pigs [Setigera] are a well-marked group, which have 

 been recognized from the earliest times and are distinguished 

 by the least-informed persons. They may almost be considered 

 the best and most anciently known thick-skinned Mammalia, 

 or Belluce of Linnteus, or Ilultungida of Illiger. 



Some palaeontologists, who have only a rudimentary know- 

 ledge of zoology and anatomy, and chiefly confine their 

 attention to the imperfect skeletons found in a fossil state, 

 have separated the Pigs from the other Belluas or thick-hided 

 Mammalia, with which they agree in all their chief external 

 and internal characters, and placed them with the liuminants, 

 because they have four toes on their feet, and call them Artio- 

 dactyla — thus destroying a group which has been acknowledged 

 by the Greek philosophers and by the Jewish historians, and 

 by Ray, Cuvier, and, indeed, naturalists of all times, to combine 

 them with a series of animals to which they have little or no 

 affinity. 



There can be no doubt that a group that has been so uni- 

 versally adopted as the Ruminants or Pecora should not be 

 destroyed without very weighty reasons and on account of 

 most important characters ; and I think that every one must 

 allow that the habit of ruminating their food, and their strictly 

 herbivorous diet, are much more important characters than the 

 mere fact of the animals having four toes, and constitute a 

 good reason for not placing with them in one group animals 

 that do not ruminate, have a quite different dentition, live on 

 a heterogeneous diet, and have entirely diflferent habits, fighting 

 with tusks instead of horns. This union is only to be compared 

 to the separation of Marsupials from the other Mammalia on 

 account of a character that can only be observed during par- 

 turition, and which no doubt is of the greatest importance 

 to the physiologist, but is scarcely recognizable by the 

 zoologist. 



The paleontologists, in choosing to use the group Artio- 

 dactyla for the Ruminants and some of the Bellufe with four 

 toes, have not only destroyed a well-established group, but 

 they have separated the Pigs and Hippopotami from their real 

 affinities to unite them to the Pecora by a character of com- 

 paratively little importance, and one which varies in almost all 

 the groups that they refer to it, to define Avhich they have 

 been obliged to separate as two distinct suborders the Hyraces 

 and the Elephant (Hyracoidea and Proboscidea) from the 

 Ungulata, which are ;.s truly Belluaj or thick-skinned animals 



