Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/43

Rh have been imported from the southern side of the Alps. This last-mentioned race, however, seems only to have lasted for a short time in Switzerland.

The wild bull (Bos primigenius) is supposed to have flourished for a while both in a wild and tame state, just as now in Europe the domestic pig co-exists with the wild boar; and Rütimeyer agrees with Cuvier and Thomas Bell, in considering our larger domestic cattle of northern Europe as the descendants of this wild bull, an opinion which Owen disputes.

In the later division of the stone period, there were two tame races of the pig, according to Rütimeyer; one large, and derived from the wild boar, the other smaller, called the 'marsh-hog,' or Sus Scrofa palustris. It may be asked how the osteologist can distinguish the tame from wild races of the same species by their skeletons alone. Among other characters, the diminished thickness of the bones and the comparative smallness of the ridges, which afford attachment to the muscles, are relied on; also the smaller dimensions of the tusks in the boar, and of the whole jaw and skull; and, in like manner, the diminished size of the horns of the bull and other modifications, which are the effects of a regular supply of food, and the absence of all necessity of exerting their activity and strength to obtain subsistence and defend themselves against their enemies.

A middle-sized race of dogs continued unaltered throughout the whole of the stone period; but the people of the bronze age possessed a larger hunting-dog, and with it a small horse, of which genus very few traces have been detected in the earlier settlements,—a single tooth, for example, at Wangen, and only one or two bones at two or three other places. In passing from the oldest to the most modern sites, the