252 PROF. ROLLESTON ON THE DOMESTIC PIG 



55° * and 60° N., and that of the tame Pig as 64° N., whilst that of the Common 

 Fowl f extends probably a little, and that of the Dog certainly much, further northward. 

 The mention of the Australian Dingo suggests another amendment of the somewhat 

 cynical remark of our great historian. 



Secondly, a very useful light is thrown, or may be thrown, upon the question of the 

 extent to which the influences of civilization act upon our own species, by the analogous 

 inquiry into the effects which domestication has been able to produce upon an animal 

 linked so closely with ourselves in a many-sided commensalism. The least pleasant 

 aspect of that commensalism, that, namely, which is presented to us by the facts of our 

 solidarity with swine in the maintenance of the alternation of the forms of life of Taenia 

 and Trichina, must, it may be remarked, upon any view of the origination of the four 

 species concerned, force upon our attention considerations of the very greatest gravity. 

 To take somewhat lower ground, from such a study as that of the variations of the Pig 

 under domestication, we may obtain safe criteria for estimating the relative effects of 

 food, whether scanty or abundant, of early or late exercise of the sexual functions, and 

 of intercrossing, upon the formation of facial characteristics. The importance of not 

 overlooking the influences of sex and of age is nowhere more forcibly pressed upon our 

 attention than in an examination of a series of skulls of Suidce. It has often been over- 

 looked in disquisitions on the skulls of Hominidce. 



Thirdly, whether the question at issue as regards man between the Polygenists and the 

 Monogenists will, as has been predicted (Darwin, ' Descent of Man,' ed. 2nd, p. 180, 

 1874), " die a silent and unobserved death " or not, there can be no doubt that illus- 

 trations of the argumentations whereby that question has been, or ought to have been, 

 dealt with, can be furnished nowhere more fitly and fully than in an inquiry into the 

 distinctness or non-distinctness of the various races of swine. 



Three distinct views have been advocated as to the relationship of the domestic to the 

 wild swine, Sus scrofa, var. ferus. We may take as the first of these that advocated by 

 Professor Steenstrup %, and stated by him in the following plain words : — " II n'y a pas 

 de transition a observer entre les sangliers et les plus anciens cochons domestiques." 



In this view Professor Steenstrup will find Mr. Samuel Sidney coincide in the opening 

 sentences of his work '■ On the Pig ;' and a view very closely similar to it was put 

 tentatively forward in the year 1821 by a savant who combined the functions of a Pro- 

 fessor of Materia Medica with those of Director of the Botanical Garden at Berlin, 

 Professor Link, in the following words, to be found in his work ' Die TJrwelt und das 

 Alterthum,' i. p. 192. 



" Das zahme Schwein stammt nach alien Naturforschern von den wilden Schweinen 

 ab, und auch die Alten waren schon dieser Meinung § ; doch scheint mir die Sache 



* For the northward range of the Wild Boar and the tame Pig," see Brandt und Ratzeburg, Med. Zool. p. 89 ; 

 Fitzinger, Sitzungsberichte d. Acad. d. Wiss. Wien, 1864, p. 387 ; Radde, Reise im Siiden von Ostsibirien, i. 236 ; 

 Zimmermann, Geographische Gesohichte, i. 189, 1778. Middendorff, in his ' Sibirisohe Reise,' p. 1062, 1867, gives 

 56° N. lat. as the extreme actual northward limit of the Wild Boar. (Since I wrote as above, Mr. H. N. Moseley has 

 procured for me a skull of a tame pig from Stene i Bo, Lofoten Islands, 2° above the arctic circle.) 



t For the northward range of the domestic Fowl, Oallus domesticus, see Brandt and Ratzeburg, I. c. p. 150. 



J Bulletin du Congres International d'Archeologie prehistorique a Copenhague en 1869, p. 163. 



§ Varro, ' De Re rustica,' 1. ii. c. 1. 



