THE RED RIVER HOG. 
Potamochoerm penicillatus. 
Plate XXIX. 
The first living specimen of this ornamental member of the Swine-Family was imported into Liverpool in 
1852, and purchased by the Zoological Society in September of that year. It was a male, captured when 
swimming across the Cameroons river, in Western Africa. A female of the same species was afterwards 
procured through the good offices of the authorities of the Jardin des Plantes of Paris, and bred with the 
male four times, though she only reared one litter, consisting of two females, which are now fully adult. One 
of these was parted with in exchange to the Zoological Society of Amsterdam. The second is still in the 
Regent’s Park Gardens, and the parents being both unfortunately dead, has been placed in the company of 
the"male Bosch-Vark, or South African River Hog, a closely allied species, a portrait of which is given in the 
previous plate. 
The Red River Ilog is extremely rare in collections of Natural History. It is deficient in all the great 
continental Museums, as it was likewise in the British Museum previously to the death of the Society s 
specimens. On the arrival of the first male in 1852, it was generally regarded as belonging to an undescribed 
species, and received from Dr. J. E. Gray the name of the “ Painted Pig of the Cameroons,” and the specific 
appellation, pictus, from its beautiful deep colouring. It was, however, subsequently discovered that this Pig 
had already been described by Professor H. Schinz, in his work entitled “ Monographies des Mammiferes,” 
from a single example in the Museum of Basle, in Switzerland, and called Sus penicillatus, from the long- 
pencilled tufts which terminate its ears. 
Some authorities have been inclined to suppose that the present species is a mere variety of the River 
Hog of Southern Africa. But no zoologist who has seen the two animals living side by side, as they are now 
placed in the Society’s Gardens, or who will even take the trouble to compare together Mr. Wolf’s figures, 
drawn from the living animals, could fall into such an error. Besides the very distinct deep red colour ot 
the West African animal, the short adpressed hair, small nuchal crest, thick tail, and elongated pencilled ears, 
clearly separate the present species from its southern representative, in which the hair is long, and more 
or less blackish, the dorsal crest large and bushy, the tail slender, and the ears and ear-pencils not nearly so 
much developed. These differences have been well pointed out by Dr. Gray, in his note upon this subject, 
in the Society’s “ Proceedings ” for 1858. 
