OF PREHISTORIC TIMES IN BRITAIN. 257 



opinion, such as inspection of authentic skulls gives, as to the relations of Sus sennaariensis 

 to Sus scrofa; hut whilst going over the series of skulls of Suidse in the British 

 Museum, I came upon one wbich, though entered under the head of Potamochcerus 

 africanus, ought, I make no doubt, to be entered under the head of Sus sennaa- 

 riensis, or, as I should prefer to call it, Sus scrofa, var. africanus. This skull is 

 numbered 715 a ; and of it we have the following history from Dr. Gray (Proc. Zool. Soc. 

 1868, p. 35 ; Brit. Mus. Catalogue, 1869, p. 342) : — " A skull without its lower jaw 

 (715 a) was brought home by Captain Alexander from his Expedition to Damara, and 

 presented to the British Museum. It is recorded in Mr. Gerrard's ' Catalogue of the 

 Bones in the British Museum' as Sus capensis (p. 277). It is the skull of an adult 

 animal, with the crown of the grinders much worn. It is probably the skull of a 

 female, as it agrees with all the characters of Potamochcerus ; but it has only a well- 

 marked ridge across the upper part of the base of the sheath of the upper canine, and 

 the upper margin of the nose is not dilated nor swollen." When I took this skull into 

 my hands I was uncharitable enough to suggest to Mr. Gerrard that it was a skull of 

 Sus cristatus wrongfully assigned to Damara as its habitat. Leaving this low ground, I 

 came to think that it might have come from some descendant of pigs of the Sus indicus 

 breed which had run wild at the Cape and reverted to the Sus cristatus form. But I 

 have now no doubt that this is a skull of such a Wild Boar as those of which Dr. Murie 

 speaks; and if this be so, the Sus of Africa is not readily to be distinguished from Sus 

 cristatus, at least by cranial characters. Dr. Gray, under the heading Sus sennaariensis 

 (Proc. Zool. Soc. t. c. p. 32, and British Mus. Catalogue, 1869, p. 338), suggests that the 

 skull figured by De Blainville (Osteographie, tab. v.) may have belonged to a Sus sen- 

 naariensis. It is described as " Sus scrofa cegypti " by De Blainville ; but, as far as I 

 can judge from the drawing, it has all the characters, to be hereinafter detailed, which 

 distinguish Sus scrofa, var. ferus, from Sus cristatus, and consequently from such a 

 skull as that labelled 715 a, and brought home by Captain Alexander. Of course there 

 is no a priori difficulty in the way of our supposing that the Wild Boar either of 

 Palestine or of Algiers, both well-known animals, may have extended into Egypt, a 

 country which has so much both of the Palsearctic and of the ^Ethiopian fauna in occu- 

 pation of its territory. Anyhow Dr. Murie and Dr. Barth are sufficient witnesses to the 

 fact that a true Sus is found in Africa south of the Atlas and Sahara. I cannot, therefore, 

 accept Mr. Wallace's statement ('Geograph. Distrib. of Animals,' vol. i. pp. 253, 286-322) 

 to the effect that a true Sus is not to be found in the ^Ethiopian region. The mistake 

 made, and handsomely acknowledged, by Eitzinger (Sitz. Akad. Wiss. Wien, 1864, Bd. 49, 

 i. p. 389), in naming certain young specimens of Sus sennaariensis by the name which 

 Er. Cuvier had given to the Masked Boar, supposing them to be the young of that species, 

 would not have occurred with adult specimens. What Er. Cuvier called Sus larvatus,we 

 know as Potamochcerus africanus ; to save further confusion of names and errors of fact, 

 it would be well to drop the name Sus larvatus altogether. Potamochcerus, which I 

 observed to resemble Sus cristatus in having a large lacrymo-frontal ridge, is, of course, 

 specifically distinct from it. Sus sennaariensis, if, as I think is most likely, closely 

 allied to Sus cristatus, is another instance of the wide distribution of " Pachyderms," a 



