FIG. 161. Cabiai.
FIG. 160. Babiroussa.
Although we have only the head of this animal in the royal cabinet, it is too remarkable to be passed over in silence. All naturalists have looked upon it as a kind of hog, though either its head, size, bristles, nor tail, resemble that animal: its legs are longer, and its muzzle shorter; it is covered with short hair, as soft as wool, and its tail is terminated by a tuft of this wool; its body is likewise not so thick and clumsy as that of the hog; its hair is grey, mixed with red and a little black; its ears are short and pointed; but the most remarkable character, and which distinguishes it from all other animals, are four enormous tusks, or canine teeth, the two shortest of which shoot out of the lower jaw, like those of the wild boar, and the two others, which come from the upper jaw, pierce the checks, or rather the upper part of the lips, and rise in a curve almost to the eyes. The tusks are a very beautiful ivory, much smoother and finer, but not so hard as that of the elephant.
The position and the direction of these two upper tusks, which rise upright, and then bend in the form of a circle, have made some skilful naturalists, such as Grew, imagine that these tusks ought not to be looked upon as teeth, but as horns. They founded their opinion upon the circumstance that in all animals the sockets of the teeth in the upper jaw open downwards; that in the babiroussa, as in the other animals, the sockets are turned downwards, except those of these two great tusks, which, on the contrary, are turned upwards; and they concluded from thence, that from this essential character of the upper teeth, these tusks, whose sockets are directed upwards, ought to be looked upon as horns and not as teeth. But these philosophers were deceived; the position or direction is only a circumstance, and not essential to the existence of an object. These tusks, though situate in an opposite manner to that of the other teeth, is only a singularity in the direction, which cannot change the nature of the thing, nor make an ivory horn of a true canine tooth.