278 PROF. ROLLESTON ON THE DOMESTIC PIG 



Professor Busk, in a letter ,to me of Dec. 17, 187*6, informs me that in the Etruscan 

 Museum at Florence, amongst numerous little bronze articles extracted from the ancient- 

 Etruscan tombs, there were many figures of animals, one in particular being a very well 

 made statuette of a pig, which to his eye very closely resembles the Berkshire breed, the 

 only point in which it differed being the comparatively large eye, whilst the rest of the 

 contour was quite what we might expect to see at an ordinary cattle-show. The animal 

 was represented apparently as having a close curled tail. "With it Avere a good many 

 statuettes of stags, the horns of which were of the type of the pliocene Cervus ctenoceros. 

 In the very perfectly restored Etruscan tomb erected in the Museum, with all its original 

 contents and frescoes, Professor Busk noticed, amongst other figures of animals, one very 

 well drawn of a monkey climbing up a tree or pole. 



I should suggest that the monkey and the pig, both alike, are representations of 

 animals from the same quarter of the globe as that whence the kinsmen of the Etrus- 

 cans in the time of Solomon brought, every three years, into Mediterranean regions, the 

 ivory, apes, and peacocks, the Sanskrit names of which still remain to speak to their 

 habitat. See Max Muller, ' Lectures on the Science of Language,' 1861, ser. i. p. 190, and 

 ser. ii. p. 234, for the source whence these animals and copper came to Europe. 



Professor Busk sent me by the same post odontograms of the teeth of S. cristatus, 

 S. scrofa, Yar.ferus, and S. scrofa, var. domesticus, which show that in S. cristatus the 

 antero-posterior length of the third molars is much greater in relation to that of the rest 

 of the molar series than it is in either of the other Suidge named. I have above, p. 262, 

 noted that the sexual differences in this matter are very considerable in S. cristatus ; 

 and those produced by domestication are also not insignificant — points which somewhat 

 impair the value of these statements of relative proportions, though no less an authority 

 than Butimeyer avers, ' Eauna der Pfahlbauten,' p. 188, that " mii viel grosserer Zahigheit • 

 das Gebiss den Species-Typus ausseren Einflussen gegeniiber avfrecht lialtals die Schadel- 

 bildung " (cf. however, Nathusius, I. c. pp. 49, 103, and Studer, Mittheil. Ant. Gesell. 

 Zurich, xix. 3, 1876, p. 67). Professor Busk also observes that in S. cristatus nearly all 

 the teeth, except molar 3, are wider in both jaws in proportion to their length than they 

 are in the other two, and that from this Ave may suppose that the Indian pig is more 

 exclusively herbivorous than the tame or wild animals with which he has compared it. 

 Jerdon speaks of S. cristcdus, I. c. p. 243, as being in general almost entirely " vegetable 

 feeders." Captain Baldwin's views ('The Game of India,' pp. 154-5, 1876) are to the 

 same effect. 



Professor Busk's drawing and description of this Etruscan pig, coupled with a similar 

 figure of a pig found in the ruins of Herculaneum (see JNTathusius, I. c. p. 142, fig. 33, 

 and Darwin, I. c. p. 71), furnishes a good illustration of Biitimeyer's saying (Eauna der 

 Pfahlbauten, p. 190), that though the modern breed of domestic pigs is recent enough 

 to have been introduced by steamboats, it nevertheless had been represented con- 

 tinuously from former ages by the Btindtner-Schwein in the valleys of the Grisons. 

 A figure of a sow suckling three young ones may be seen on an Umbrian medal of 

 probably the third century B.C. at latest, figured by M. Sambon, in his ' Mommies 

 Antiques de l'ltalie,' 1870, pi. v. 5, with the short snout bent on the chanfrin, the 



