CHEVROTAINS AND PECCARIES 
on the chest and belly, but the one common in Ceylon and India 
has spotted flanks. They hide in the jungles and rocky places 
and serve the Malays as a type of cunning and cleverness; 
they will assure you even that when a kanchil or napu is chased 
by dogs he will spring into the air, hook his musklike tusks 
over a tree branch, and swing there out of reach until the dogs 
get tired and go away. West Africa has a handsomely spotted 
chevrotain addicted to marshes and rivers. The principal 
interest attached to these deerlets is that they are very ancient, 
having changed little from their far more widely distributed 
ancestors in the Miocene and Pliocene periods; and in their 
teeth, the separateness of their metapodial bones, the fact that 
the stomach has only three chambers, etc., they show features 
from which the remainder of the ruminants long ago diverged. 
They therefore serve as a sort of bridge by which we may pass 
easily to the last section of the artiodactyls, the Suina or 
swine and hippo, which do not chew the cud; have a complete 
dentition; have simple, not chambered, stomachs; the bones 
of the feet not united into a cannon bone; and in most cases 
four toes reaching the ground. 
The most specialized of the pigs are our southern peccaries, 
the only native American swine, which approach the rumi- 
nants in having only thirty-eight teeth; in having 
but three toes on the hind feet (lacking the fifth), 
and the two central metapodials fused at the top; and in the 
fact that the upper tusks are directed downward. An alto- 
gether unique feature is a large gland, navel-like and skin-deep 
in the middle of the back, secreting a vile-smelling oil, the stench 
of which infects the whole neighborhood of the haunt of a band. 
This gland must be immediately cut out of any animal intended 
to be eaten, but the flesh at best is not very desirable. 
Peccaries are small, thin-legged, grizzled-black pigs, with 
very thick, bristly necks and large, angular heads. They have 
wicked little eyes, razor-sharp tusks in both jaws, and no visible 
343 
Peccaries. 
