OF PREHISTORIC TIMES IN BRITAIN. 261 



"both, wild and domestic, as well as of Sus cristatus and Sus indicus, at birth *. Lieu- 

 tenants W. E. Baker and H. V. Durand, in their paper on " Subhimalayan Possil 

 Remains of the Dadupiir Collection," in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 

 vol. v. 1836, p. 664, observe of the two fossil skulls which they describe, that in both 

 "there is in the frontal plane a total absence of convexity. As this plane ascends 

 there is a tendency to concavity, in consequence of the parietal crests beino- more 

 strongly marked than in the existing species, and thus producing the appearance of 

 a gentle hollow where, in the common Wild Hog, there would be a gentle swell." 

 Further on, in the same paper, the authors remark : — "Prom the form of the cranium 

 the shape of the canines and incisors, and the other points in which the fossil differs 

 from the existing species of the country, a specific difference may be inferred; for the 

 dissimilarity, although less than that which occurs between the Babyrussa, the S. larvatus 

 and the Sus scrofa, or Common Hog, is too remarkable, particularly in the shape of the 

 canines of the lower jaw, to admit of the fossil being considered as a mere variety of 

 the Sus scrofa." Sir Walter Elliot, however, to whom I owe this reference as well as 

 other things, writes me to the effect that the skulls sent by him to me " do not seem to 

 differ much from the Subhimalayan fossil specimens figured and described," as above 

 specified. And it is worthy of being put upon record that of five skulls of modern Wild 

 Indian Hogs thus sent by Sir Walter Elliot, three show the upgrowth of parietal crests, 

 which Lieutenants Baker and Durand had supposed to be characteristic of the fossil 

 animal, and to contribute towards justifying its claim to be considered specifically dis- 

 tinct. These three skulls have the following labels and histories appended to them by 

 Sir Walter Elliot, which, when coupled with the localities assigned below to the British- 

 Museum specimens (specimens not, so far as I can see, different in any essential point 

 from Sir W. Elliot's), bear importantly on the question of the unity of Sus cristatus :— 



No. 71. Large Boar, killed near Rajkote, in KLattywar, June 4, 1832. He was with 

 a large sounder, and ripped two horses severely. Bajkote is in the extensive 

 open plains of the Kattywar peninsula. 



No. 330. Nilgherry Hills, 1840. 



No. 428. Jaggiapettah, 1851. On the east side of the Madras Presidency, in the. 

 Masulipatam district, on the high road from Masulipatam to Hyderabad. 

 These three skulls agree in having their third molars considerably worn and their 

 canines large, their muscular insertion-surfaces marked with polygonal reticulations f in 

 some places, and with arborescent markings in others, and, thirdly, in the spar-like hard- 

 ness and density of the bones generally ; and they must be supposed consequently to have 

 belonged to old and powerful male animals. In all of these points they differ more or 

 less from the other two skulls, also of male but of younger and less powerful animals. 

 But such differences as these are far from being of specific value, either in comparison 

 of modern races with fossil ones, or in comparison of modern races inter se. All the five 

 skulls, however, lent to me by Sir Walter Elliot possess the lacry mo-frontal ridge 

 developed into a very considerable prominence ; and though every now and then I have 



* Sefe Nathusius, pi. i. figs. 1 & 3, pi. iii. fig. 13, and pp. 3 & 13. Compare the mesial fulness in the frontals of 

 S. pctpuensis. t For similar reticulation in Bos primigenius see Riitimcyer, Fauna der Pfahlbauten, Taf. iii. fig, 3. 



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