Dr. J. E. Gray on Pigs and their Skulls. 431 L. — Observations on Pigs (Sus, Linnaeus] Setifera, Illiger) and their Skulls^ with the Description of a new Species. By Dr. J. E. Gray, F.K.S. &c. The Pigs [Setigera] are a well-marked group, which have been recognized from the earliest times and are distinguished by the least-informed persons. They may almost be considered the best and most anciently known thick-skinned Mammalia, or Belluce of Linnteus, or Ilultungida of Illiger. Some palaeontologists, who have only a rudimentary know-ledge of zoology and anatomy, and chiefly confine their attention to the imperfect skeletons found in a fossil state, have separated the Pigs from the other Belluas or thick-hided Mammalia, with which they agree in all their chief external and internal characters, and placed them with the liuminants, because they have four toes on their feet, and call them Artio-dactyla — thus destroying a group which has been acknowledged by the Greek philosophers and by the Jewish historians, and by Ray, Cuvier, and, indeed, naturalists of all times, to combine them with a series of animals to which they have little or no affinity. There can be no doubt that a group that has been so uni-versally adopted as the Ruminants or Pecora should not be destroyed without very weighty reasons and on account of most important characters ; and I think that every one must allow that the habit of ruminating their food, and their strictly herbivorous diet, are much more important characters than the mere fact of the animals having four toes, and constitute a good reason for not placing with them in one group animals that do not ruminate, have a quite different dentition, live on a heterogeneous diet, and have entirely diflferent habits, fighting with tusks instead of horns. This union is only to be compared to the separation of Marsupials from the other Mammalia on account of a character that can only be observed during par-turition, and which no doubt is of the greatest importance to the physiologist, but is scarcely recognizable by the zoologist. The paleontologists, in choosing to use the group Artio-dactyla for the Ruminants and some of the Bellufe with four toes, have not only destroyed a well-established group, but they have separated the Pigs and Hippopotami from their real affinities to unite them to the Pecora by a character of com-paratively little importance, and one which varies in almost all the groups that they refer to it, to define Avhich they have been obliged to separate as two distinct suborders the Hyraces and the Elephant (Hyracoidea and Proboscidea) from the Ungulata, which are ;.s truly Belluaj or thick-skinned animals
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