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XIII. On the Domestic Pig of Prehistoric Times in Britain, and on the mutual Relations 

 of this variety of Pig and Sus scrofa ferus, Sus cristatus, Sus andamanensis, and 

 Sus barbatus. By George Rolleston, M.D., F.R.S., F.L.S., Linacre Professor 

 of Anatomy and Physiology, Oxford. 



(Plates XLI.-XLIII.) 



Eead June 15th, 1876. 



x ORTIONS of two skeletons of domestic pigs having been put into my hands by the 

 Rev. William Greenwell, P.S.A., from an interment of the so-called late Celtic period, i. e. 

 of the ultimate or penultimate century before the Roman conquest of this country, 

 I determined to compare them with such other specimens of Suidae as might by any 

 possibility be genetically connected with them. Among these other specimens I may 

 mention, first, several specimens of the Wild Boar, Sus scrofa, var. ferus, from the alluvial 

 deposits of this neighbourhood, and now in the Geological Series of the Oxford Museum, 

 under the charge of Professor Prestwich, P.R.S.; secondly, five specimens of the Indian 

 Wild Hog, Sus cristatus, kindly lent me by Sir Walter Elliot, K.C.S.I., P.L.S. ; thirdly, 

 two skulls of Sus andamanensis, presented to the Oxford University Museum by my friend 

 Prof. J. Wood-Mason, of the Indian Museum, Calcutta; and fourthly, four skulls 

 of Sus barbatus from Borneo. The extensive series of skulls of Suidse contained in the 

 British Museum, those in the Royal College of Surgeons of London, and the specimens 

 of wild- and domestic-swine skulls contained in our own collection were also used for 

 this comparison. 



It may be well at the outset to specify the several points of wide and general interest 

 upon which such an inquiry as the ensuing may be brought to bear. Pirst among these 

 I would mention its bearings upon the now so commonly discussed questions relating to 

 the early migrations of our own species. The pig was one of the earliest, possibly the 

 very earliest, of animals which man domesticated ; and the question of the source or 

 sources whence it was derived has consequently an "ethnographisch-archseologische Bedeu- 

 tung" (to use the words of Pischer *, in his analogous investigation as to the sources 

 whence the jade and nephrite of early European times were procured) of the first import- 

 ance. Gibbon t has remarked that " man is the only animal which can live and multiply 

 in every country from the equator to the poles ;" and he has proceeded to aver that " the 

 hog seems to approach nearest to our species in that privilege." As a matter of fact, 

 Gibbon here, as so often elsewhere, was very nearly though not quite exact : the north- 

 ward limit of the range of the Wild Boar may perhaps be taken as somewhere between 



* H. Fischer, ' Nephrit und Jadeit nach ihren mineralogischen Eigenschaften.' Stuttgart, 1875. For similar 

 investigations as to the sources of the cultivated plants and the weeds of prehistoric times, see Keller's « Lake- 

 DweUiDg's,' translated by Lee, pp. 303 and 343. 



t ' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' chap. ix. note 9, p. 352. Smith's edition. 

 SECOND SERIES. — ZOOLOGY, VOL. I. 2 L 



