OF PREHISTORIC TIMES IN BRITAIN. 255 



Cuvier, Hist. Mamm., represent it as having the root and tip of its tail lying evenly 

 between two points ; though the Vienna zoologist just referred to says of this appendage 

 in this animal, " Schwanz geringelt, kurz, nicht ganz bis zum Fersengelenke reichend." 

 And as an indication of the trifling value of such a point as this, it may be remarked that 

 of two female specimens of the very well-marked species, Sus barbatus, one young, the 

 other old, figured by S. Muller, Verhand. i. taf. 30, one has the tail curled, and the other, 

 the elder one, has it straight. 



Mr. Blyth {cit. Jerdon, I. c.) holds £. cristatus to be only a variety of the Wild Boar of 

 Europe, but still to be a well-marked race. De Blainville (Osteog. Sus, p. 129) sees no 

 differences of morphological importance between any of the Asiatic Swine and the Euro- 

 pean Wild Boar, and says, " La premiere espece que le squelette nous permette de distin- 

 guer par des caracteres susceptibles d'etre lus et exposes est celle qui se trouve dans toute 

 l'Afrique au dela de l'Atlas et jusqu'a son extremite la plus meridionale et meme au dela 

 dans la grande ile de Madagascar, et qui est connue sous le nom de Sus larvatus " (Pota- 

 mochoerus africanus, Porcus madagascariensis, nobis). Giebel follows De Blainville in 

 this. Dr. Gray, in Proc. Zool. Soc. 1852, p. 130, said that, after examining ten skulls of the 

 European Wild Boar and its offspring from this country, from the Gambia, and from the 

 Cape, as also twelve skulls of the Wild Hog from Continental India, he could not discover 

 any constant easily described character by which the European and the Indian kinds could 

 be distinguished. And, he adds, " this is the case in the many other genera allied to 

 the Pigs." It is true, noxloubt, that many animals, such as " the lion and the tiger, 

 the fox and the jackal, the ass and the zebra, are far more strikingly differentiated by 

 their pelage than by their skulls," as Professor Huxley (' Prehistoric Remains of Caith- 

 ness,' p. 132) has taught us ; still it yet remains to be proved that differences which, 

 though only skin-deep, are constant and permanent, will not ultimately be found to be 

 correlated with more or fewer differences of the deeper-lying parts, either of a purely 

 qualitative or of a quantitative kind. 



In a disquisition the ultimate object of which is the attainment of clearer views as to 

 the origin of our tame pigs, the question meets us at the outset whether there exists 

 any marked difference between the wild stocks under comparison as regards their suscep- 

 tibility of domestication. Upon this point I have to say that I find, in opposition to 

 what Mr. Samuel Sidney has laid down in the first chapter of his work on the Pig, 

 that Sus scrofa, var. ferns, is credited by most trustworthy authors with as great a 

 capacity for domestication as any wild animal, including its wild Asiatic congeners, upon 

 which observations are recorded as to this particular susceptibility. Pallas's words in his 

 ' Zoographia,' i. p. 269, as to the Wild Boar of the Paleearctic Region, called by him, not 

 inconveniently, Sus europmis, in contradistinction to the China or Siam Pig, called by 

 him Sus indicus, says plainly and emphatically " Porcelli cicurari assuescunt facile et cum 

 domesticis generant." Radde's utterances (Beisen im Siiden von Ost-Sibirien, Bd. i. 

 p. 236) are even more to the point, as they affirm the like of wild swine of greater age. 

 They run thus " So muss ich gestehen dass sie sehr friedlicher Natur sind, und es rnir 

 mehrmals passirte mittelalte Wildschweine sich mir bis auf vier Eaden Weite nahen zu 

 sehen." 



