THE PIG TRIBE.
BY H. A. BRYDEN.
Many species and varieties of swine are found in different parts of the world, most of them exhibiting strong traces of a general family resemblance, although widely sundered as to habitats and often markedly differing in outward appearance. All are omnivorous; all have the stomach simpler in type than in the Ruminants; and all have front or incisor teeth in the upper jaw. The two great families of swine proper are the Pigs and Peccaries.
Photo by W. Reid] [Wishaw, N.B.
A DOMESTICATED SOW AND HER PROGENY.
The absence of stripes and spots on the young is a feature in which they differ from those of nearly all wild swine.
There has been much discussion among scientists as to the early origin of the various breeds of domestic swine found in different parts of the world. There can be little doubt that, although selective breeding has produced extraordinary differences in outward appearance, even among the domestic pigs of our own islands, the origin of the numerous tame races is to be sought in the ancestry of the wild breeds of the countries in which they are found. Darwin has some very apposite remarks on the differences to be observed in domesticated swine. "The peculiar form of the skull and body in the most highly cultivated races is," he observes, "not characteristic of any one race, but is common to all when improved up to the same standard. Thus the large-bodied, long-eared English breed, with a convex back, and the small-bodied, short-eared Chinese breeds, with a concave back, when bred to the same state of perfection, nearly resemble each other in the form of the head and body. This result, it appears, is partly due to similar causes of change acting on the several races, and partly to man breeding the pig for one sole purpose—namely, for the greatest amount of flesh and fat; so that selection has always tended towards one and the same end. With most domestic animals the result of selection has been divergence of character; here it has been convergence."
