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Show 1870.] MR. R. SWINHOE ON CHINESE MAMMALS. 643 strength can oppose the Tiger. When enraged it will wound people with its tusks, abruptly breaking their ribs or goring their bellies. It rushes on its object like the wind. Hunters dare not shoot them." The Chinese colonists have introduced their black hollow-backed breed of Pigs from South China ; and among the villages of the plains you see none but these. At Takow a European imported a large white English tame boar, and it was allowed freely to cross with the Chinese Pigs; and an improved piebald breed has been the result, and has shown itself perfectly fertile when crossed with the sire, with one another, and with the Chinese Pig. In Ogilby's 'Atlas Chinensis,' ii. p. 8, we read that on the arrival of the Dutch in Formosa in the early part of the seventeenth century, when the Chinese were just beginning to colonize, every aboriginal " woman had commonly a great Pig running after her, as we use to have a Dog." Thus before the islanders had intercourse with the outer world they had a Pig of their own, which is still found among the tribes of the central mountains. These are curious animals, of a chestnut-red colour throughout ; but I have occasionally seen examples patched with white. The young of this breed are also red, the skin and all the soft and horny parts being stained with more or less of the prevailing colour. From the form of this Pig and the small size and shape of its ear, I should think that it is doubtless derived from the wild stock of the island. The traditions of the natives confirm this impression; and the Pig was the only domestic animal they were found to possess when the island first came under European observation. But why should domestication have changed the animal to a red colour instead of to black and white, the usual colours that first develope under its influence ? As a rule animals in their variability have a less tendency to erythrism than to either albinism or melanism ; but domestication in this species has inaugurated change by developing the first in preference to the other two. The reason why, I cannot divine. I have found this red Pig cross readily with the Chinese black Pig; and the young in such cases appeared with indications of the stripes of the young wild Pig. But this I take to be due to the intermingling of the colours of the parents, and would probably have been carried into maturity had the offspring lived. My time was unfortunately too short to continue experiments of this kind ; so I sent several of the red Pigs to England in the hope that somebody at home would take the matter in hand. But m y specimens were not hailed with a welcome. From the savages of the east coast of Formosa I received a pair of Pigs, black, white, and red, with moderate-sized ears, long face, and long bristles on the upper parts. These looked very like a cross between the red Pig and a domestic English Pig ; and it is not impossible that some ship may have supplied to the natives on that coast the progenitors on the one side. The skull, however, of this Pig shows no great difference from that of the wild stock of the island, except in having a more prominent forehead and in the greater length of the bones of the face. Whilst at Amoy I received from Chefoo (North China) a strange variety of tame Pig, with a piebald woolly coat, the young of which |