36 
MAMMALS OF LEICESTERSHIRE AND RUTLAND, 
large tusks found in Friar Lane, Leicester, in 1867, and a smaller pair of tusks 
and three teeth from Abbey Street (N.D.), presented by Mr. Joseph Goddard, 
are referrible to this species. Wild Hogs, according to Potter, abounded in the 
Forest of Cbarnwood, and, under the ancient forest laws, the bunting of the 
Boar was limited between Christmas and Candlemas, 
]MARSH-HOG, Sus pcdustris (Riitimeyer). 
Of this doubtful species — being, probably, merely the Neolithic Hog 
reverting to a wild state — I found the basal portion of skull and one tusk, 
9 ft. deep in alluvium, during the Flood Works excavations at Bede House 
iMeadows, in Oct., 1888. 
I cannot leave the Suidae without referring to a ludicrous paragraph 
appearing in the ‘ Midland Times ’ of 15th Sept., 1883, relative to a natural 
formation (probably a nodule of ironstone) which was found the year before 
during excavations for a new sewer, in High Street, Market Harborough, and 
passed into the possession of a resident as a fossil ham ! I now quote literally 
the point of the paragraph, which was published in all seriousness : — 
“ The frost, however, of last winter caused a slight crack to appear in the 
widest part, and the warm weather of the last few weeks appears to have widened 
it, for on going to move it last week it came in two, when, singularly enough, 
the internal appearances corroborated the belief that at some period of the 
world’s history it must have been a veritable ham. There was a distinct redness 
where the lean part of that joint is found, with white streaks across it, almost 
at right angles, where the veins would be. On one side of this reddish part 
there was a peculiar colour, as though the fat had turned ‘ reasty,’ and farther 
off a yellowish tinge indicated the position of the ‘ pope’s eye.’ Externally 
the shape corresponded exactly to that of a ham, even to the indentations 
at the knuckle-joint. Geologists, we believe, are generally unfavourable to the 
idea that flints or stones of the shape of any living object could by any 
possibility have been such, and it will therefore be interesting to know what 
they will have to say to the internal evidence that this specimen presents.” 
Order CETACEA. 
Sub-order MY8TAC0CETI. 
Family BAL^NID^. 
WHALE. Balccna (sp. inc.). 
Two portions of the mandible or lower jaw of a huge Cetacean, resembling, 
if not identical with, the existing Greenland “ Right ” Whale, Balcena mysticetus, 
Linngeus, were found during the excavations for the Abbey Park, Oct., 1880, and 
