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Show 1868.] DR. J. E. GRAY ON THE SUIDAE. 19 Fitzinger, in his Essay on the Setifera, in the ' Sitzungsberichte, of the Vienna Academy for 1864, has brought together what has been written on the subject, and has given a useful synopsis of the species as characterized by their external characters. Unfortunately we have not any good works on the Domestic Pig, or clear history of the origin of several of the most approved breeds, some of which are most probably the result of the interbreeding of several varieties. Desmarest, in his ' Mammiferes,' gives a list of the domestic varieties divided into subvarieties (see M a m m . p. 390). Youall ('Pig,' 1860) and Richardson ('On the Pigs and their Origin,' 1847) have written on the English breeds*. Little information respecting the species of the family is to be obtained from travellers; they are generally satisfied with stating that a wild boar was observed, sometimes adding that it afforded good sport, and rarely make any observations respecting the domestic pigs. They often include under the name of "wild boar" species of different genera, as the French naturalists do under the name of sanglier. The skins of pigs are rarely preserved, except by professional collectors ; and they only collect the wild specimens ; so that the specimens in Museums are limited in number and kinds, and afford very imperfect materials for the systematic zoologist. The domestic animals of the different countries inhabited by man, and especially the effect of the climate or local circumstances on those that have been introduced from other countries, have yet to be 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-abundant, prosperous, and highbred 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 rats, mice, squirrels, bats, and such small and comparatively unimportant animals, as far as m a n is concerned, who generally classes them with vermin. Suborder II. SETIFERA. Toes in pairs; the hinder pair shorter; the outer ones on the hind feet sometimes wanting. Stomach simple. Skin thick, with bristles. Nose conical, truncated at the end, enclosing a couple of supplementary bones between the intermaxillary and nasals, used * Since this was written, I have been informed by Mr. Darwin that Hermann von Nathusius of Prussia has written on the Races of Pigs (1860), and published the figures of a number of skulls (1864); but I have not been able to see these works; they are not in the Museum Library, nor in those of the Zoological. Royal, and Linnean Societies. |