suiBJB. 327 



studied. There is no subject which naturalists living in a different 

 country have so entirely neglected, because they have supposed that 

 everything respecting it is known, while the truth is no animals are 

 so imperfectly known or understood. Take, for instance, the Horse, 

 which is so completely naturalized in North and South America, and 

 so locally distributed in Africa — abundaiit, prosperous, and high- 

 bred in some parts, very rare and, when present, greatly deteriorated 

 in others, even in the same latitudes. It is the same with the Pig. 

 Indeed these large animals, common to a great part of the inhabited 

 world, are less known than the species of the Eats, Mice, Squirrels, 

 Bats, and siich small and comparatively unimportant animals, as far 

 as man is concerned, who generally classes them with vermin. 



* The premolars permanent, forming with the molars a conttmunts series 



of teeth. 



Fam. 5. SUID^. 



Head pointed. Snout blunt, slender. Ears large. Body com- 

 pressed. Legs slender. Skin covered with close bristly hairs. 

 Grinders tubercular, with a few separate roots. Canines prismatic, 

 triangular ; upper recurved from the base. Teeth 44 or 40 : — Cut- 

 ting-teeth f . f ; premolars f . |^ or -I . |^ ; molars | . §-. Tail elongate, 

 rarely absent. Teats 10 or rarely 8. Young of wild races striped 

 on the sides. 



Suina, Cfray, Ann. Phil. 1825 ; lAst Mamm. B. M. p. 284 ; Bonap. 



Prod. p. 6 ; Oiehel, Simgeth. p. 221. 

 Setigera, Fitz. SUz. Akad. der Wiss. 1864, p. 883. 

 SuidEe, Owen, Odont. i. p. 543; Gray, P. Z. S. 1868, p. 22. 

 Suideee, Lesson, N. Tab. B. A. 1842, p. 160. 

 Suidse, § 3, Schinz, Syst. Verz. ii. p. 344. 



The change in the dentition of the Pig is represented by De Blain- 

 viQe, ' Osteographie, Onguligrades,' Sus, t. 8, and by Owen, ' Odont.' 

 p. 524, t. 140. Buffon (Hist. Nat. v. p. 110) erroneously says that 

 the milk-teeth of the Pig are not changed, and remain permanent. 

 At page 181 he quotes (Aristotle, Des Animaux, Mb. 2. chap. 1) 

 further that the Pigs never lose any of their teeth. The crown of 

 the grinders are many-lobed, especially the hinder one, which is 

 larger than the rest. 



" The progressive increase of size in the molar teeth as they are 

 situated further back in the mouth may also be noticed as a family 

 characteristic, which, with the complication of the crown and deve- 

 lopment of the teeth, reaches its maximum in the Phacochoeres." — 

 Owen, Odont. p. 544. 



