6740 



Zoology of the Andaman Islands. 



With some surprise we remark that not a word is said in the 

 Government Report respecting the curious fact, that, whilst the pig 

 is the only warm-blooded quadruped as yet determined on the islands, 

 it proves to be of a species exceedingly different from any race of 

 domestic swine, whether Indian or Chinese, and equally so from all 

 the numerous wild swine of S.E. Asia and its Archipelago, with the 

 two exceptions of Sus papuensis of New Guinea, and the curious 

 Pyg m y hog of the sub-Himalayan sal-forest, which is described by 

 Mr. Hodgson by the name Porcula salvania. These three species 

 differ from all the rest by their diminutive size, and externally by 

 having a mere tubercle in place of a tail ; while in the relative pro- 

 portion of the molar teeth the difference is so considerable that Mr. 

 Hodgson separated the one known to him as the type of a distinct 

 division, styled by him Porcula. 



Whether the little wild pig of the Andamans inhabits also the 

 neighbouring group of the Nicobar islands remains to be ascertained ; 

 but the modern Nicobarians have domestic swine of a very large size, 

 which they have doubtless obtained from the European shipping. 

 There is a slight notice and very rude figure of the skull of the tiny 

 hog, from the Little Andaman, in Jameson's ' Edinburgh New Philo- 

 sophical Journal,' vol. xvi. (1826-7) ; but all that is stated of the ani- 

 mal occurs in the description of an Andamanese hut, — "Ranged in a 

 row round the walls [!] were the smoked skulls of a diminutive hog," 

 — a statement which, with the figure, serves to prove the existence of 

 the species on that particular island. It is not unlikely, but rather 

 the reverse, that it may yet prove to inhabit the forests of the neigh- 

 bouring mainland, the zoology of which has not been much investi- 

 gated ; for be it remembered that its congener of the sub-Himalayan 

 sal-forests was long overlooked. 



In the Preface to the Government Report we read that the Anda- 

 mans " are extremely deficient in animal life, and the birds inhabiting 

 them are comparatively few ; but the reefs and bays abound in shell 

 and other fish." Shell and other fish ! — do not these constitute ani- 

 mal life in their way ? But it is a vague method of writing, another 

 instance of which we have just chanced to notice in Ogle's book on 

 'Western Australia,' where the author tells us that "the fish are with- 

 out number, from the whale to the shrimp." In a late number of the 

 ' Illustrated London News ' v\e find a seal figured as " the talking and 

 acting^s^;" and in like manner the flying fox might as well be 

 termed a bird, albeit surely not of the feathered class ; and we might 

 adopt the Indian and Chinese fancy of classifying the Manis, or Pan- 



