On the domestic pig of prehistoric times in Britain, and on the mutual relations of this variety of pig and Sus scrofa ferus, Sus cristatus, Sus andamanensis, and Sus barbatus / by George Rolleston.
- George Rolleston
- Date:
- 1876
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On the domestic pig of prehistoric times in Britain, and on the mutual relations of this variety of pig and Sus scrofa ferus, Sus cristatus, Sus andamanensis, and Sus barbatus / by George Rolleston. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![wliicli, togetlier with two others, with the same appearance as to textural condition, had been brought out of the stores of the Museum into its series. Both these other skulls possessed the short lacrymal so characteristic, as the subjoined tables of measure- ments will show, of Sus cristatus and its allies, together with the other points usually observed in that animal’s skull. The principal points, besides those of genevsl facies and proj)ortions, which appeared to me to justify this assignment of skull 3251« (Boyal College of Surgeons) were, in the absence of the shortness of the lacrymal:—first, the great prominence of what may be called the lacrymo-frontal ridge, that part of the frontal bone, to wit, which lies between the channel for the supraorbital nerve mesially and the upper border of the lacrymal bone outwardly; secondly, the great relative deve- lopment of the part of the third molar which is posterior to the two anterior bicus- pidate lobes of that tooth; thirdly, the absence of convexity backwards in the naso- frontal suture. These three points are usually present in Sits cristatus, as seen in figures 4 and 6, appended to tins paper, and taken from two Indian specimens; and they are usually found to be accompanied by the fourth peculiarity of a short lacrymal. One or other of these characters may be absent; but in an undoubted specimen of an adult male Sus cristatus I have never seen more than one of these missing; whilst it is rare for the second, and very rare for either the first or the third, to be found in undoubted specimens of the Palsearctic Wild Boar. In a skull figured by Mr. Bichardson {1. c. p. 50), from “ an excavation in an island on Loch Gur, a lake in the neighbourhood of Limerick,” and “ found in company with skulls of oxen, goats, sheep, red deer, reindeer, and our extinct gigantic deer, sometimes erroneously styled the Irish Elk,” but considered by Nathusius (p. 150) to have belonged to a domestic animal, it is true that the lacrymo- frontal ridge is represented as of great size; but we must set against the assigning of much importance to this fact the considerations that the drawing is taken from a reconstructed skull, that it is obviously inaccurate in some points, as, for example, like a drawing in S. Muller’s Verhandel. (Taf. 28 bis, fig. 3), in having an extra tooth posteriorly to its canines, and that it may consequently be supposed to be likely to be inaccurate in other particulars also. The fronto-lacrymal ridge is, of course, in the adult underlain by a pro- longation of the frontal sinuses; it is, however, visible enough in very young specimens of domestic pigs, which show otlier points of affinity to the Sus indicus long before the frontal sinuses are fully developed; and I am inclined to think it may sometimes, though certainly not always, be detected in very young specimens of Sus scrofa, var. ferns, such as the one figured by Nathusius, 1. c. (Taf. i. fig. 1, Taf. iii. fig. 13). Though the fulness of this region is due in the adult partly to its being underlain by frontal sinuses, which are relatively small in the early stages of the animal’s life, there is still some justification for regarding this structure as an instance of the retention by the adult of an early structural arrangement; for it is easy to understand that the contour described by the external tables in early youth may be carried out conform- ably by the bloodvessels of the scalp as the animal grows older. A parallel to such a process is furnished to us very frequently, though ])y no means so nearly universally, by the retention in the adult Sus cristatus of that fulness and convexity of the vertical aspect of the fronto-parietal region wliich is characteristic of Stis scrofa](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22463471_0016.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
