266 PROF. ROLLESTON ON THE DOMESTIC PIG 



examined by me ; and its obvious general significance is increased by the fact that it is 

 in the area of the mesopterygoid that the great basicranial cavities are excavated in the 

 JBablrussa and JPhacochoerus, and are represented rudimentarily in Sus vitlakis. 



Knowing what we do * of the affinity of the fauna of the subregion of Ceylon and 

 South India to that of Malaya, there is no a priori improbability in a view which 

 should accept the Sus ceylonensis of Blyth t (Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, xx. 

 p. 173) as identical with the Sus barbatus of Borneo. Mr. Blyth's words, I. c, are as follows : 

 — " Stts zeylanensis. Skull longer than that of the Indian Boar, nearly straight in profile, 

 very much contracted at the vertex. Palate contracting posteriorly to less than 1" from 

 the magnitude of the last molar, which is considerably larger in both jaws than in the 

 Wild Boar of India, the upper measuring If" long by jf" broad anteriorly. Vertex nar- 

 rowing to 1" only in breadth. Total length of skull from vertex to tips of nasals 16J". 

 Altogether the skull approximates closely in contour to the figures of the skulls of Sus 

 barbatus by Dr. S. Muller and M. Temminck." Dr. Gray appears to have had access, 

 which I have not had, to a photograph of this Sus zeylanensis, and says that, judging 

 from it, " the skull is much shorter and thicker than the skull of S. barbatus. The pho- 

 tograph is much more like that of Sus verrucosus." For my own part, I cannot think 

 Mr. Blyth would ever have spoken of a real male Sus barbatus as having a skull with a 

 straight profile ; Muller and Schlegel figured a female skull, whereas Mr. Blyth's, I am 

 sure, was a male's. As regards the contraction of the vertex, which shows Mr. Blyth's 

 skull to have been a male's, this is sometimes exceeded by the old and strongly muscular 

 Indian Wild Hog, such as Sir Walter Elliot's No. 71 (for history of which see p. 261), 

 where it is only 8", whilst in the skull No. 72 it is l - 8", showing an oscillation, owing to 

 the varying action of the temporal muscles which entirely deprives it of any morphological 

 value ; and the measurements of the molars, finally, assure me that there is no need to 

 add the words " und wahrscheinlich auch Ceylon " to the word " Borneo " as the " Vater- 

 land " of Sus barbatus, as Fitzinger has done, I. c. p. 393. Muller and Schlegel, p. 179, 

 give Borneo, if I rightly read their words, as the " habitat " of this well-marked species. 



Secondly, of Sus verrucosus. The soft and perishable parts of Sus verrucosus are even 

 more interesting and of greater importance than the bones ; for they show us that wild pigs 

 do have appendages — warts, to wit, covered with long bristles, and attached to the corners 

 of the lower jaw, like those of the Irish Greyhound Pig, once so plentiful in Galway ; and 

 they thus do away with one of the objections to Mr. Darwin's views, stated fairly (by him- 

 self) in the work on Animals and Plants under Domestication, i. p. 79, ed. 1875. If it 

 is a profitable thing to lay Muller and Schlegel's figure of Sus verrucosus (tab. 28. /. c.) 

 alongside of Richardson's figure of the " Old Irish Greyhound Pig " (I. c. p. 49 ; Darwin, 

 I. c. p. 79), it is profitable also to read the Dutch letterpress % of the two former authors, 



* Tennant, Nat. Hist, of Ceylon, pp. 61-68, 186 ; Wallace, Geographical Distribution, i. p. 328. 



t See Gray, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1868, p. 24; Brit. Mus. Cat. 1869, p. 331. 



X The words of the two Dutch naturalists are, Verhandel. p. 177. " De deer jonge voorwerpen dezer sort zijn niet 

 gestreept, en onderschicden zieh daardoor van de jongen van Sus vittatus en van de meeste, ja, misschien van alle overige 

 soorten." It is much to he regretted that Dr. Gray did not enter a note of this most important fact in his papers 

 above referred to, in which the 'Verhandelingen' are often cited. 



