On the Malayan and Papuan Pigs in the Leyden Museum

If we separate some aberrant forms like Babirussa, Dicotyles, Phacochoerus, Potamochoerus and Porcula ¹) from Cray’s suborder Setifera, there remains a large series of Pigs which present a striking resemblance in external appearance and in dentition; they more or less remember our common Sus scrofa. The latter is the only representant in Europe, meanwhile the others are distributed over Asia, the islands of the East Indian Archipelago and New-Guinea. If comparing the members of this group with Sus scrofa and at the same time if paying attention to their geographical distribution, one discovers that the group may be split in several smaller ones which generally coincide with a more or less restricted geographical area; names have been given to the latter smaller groups and different species have been admitted. But if all the large and small islands where at present Pigs are to be found were connected by land with the Indian continent, then I am convinced that there would be naturalists at hand to look upon those Pigs as varieties of Sus scrofa, and perhaps with more chance of probability than has been attained by defenders of the opposite view, authors like Dr. Gray and Père Heude, who have divided the mentioned large group in numerous genera and in an unlimited number of species. So Dr. Gray (Catalogue, 1869 and Hand-list, 1873) recognized the following — according to him well defined — genera: Euhys, Aulacochoerus, Dasychoerus, Sus, Scrofa and Centuriosus, and Père Heude (Mémoires concernant l’histoire naturelle de l’Empire chinois, 1888) distinguished in East Asia eleven distinct new species of the genus Sus, viz.: ussuricus, dicrurus, taininensis, calamianensis, cebifrons, minutus. effrenus, conchyvorus, jalaensis, microtis and frenatus. Gray ¹) correctly observed that the study of the Pigs is attended with considerable difficulty, probably arising from three peculiarities of the group: 1°. That most of the wild or presumed wild species are easily reduced to a domestic or semidomestic condition.