Page:Natural History Review (1862).djvu/50

Rh of an Ox (B. trochoceros) which doee not occur in the earlier Pileworks. In considering whether a given animal was wild or domesticated, we must be guided by the following considerations: the number of individuals represented; the relative proportions of young and old; the absence or presence of very old individuals, at least of species that served for food; the traces of long, though indirect, selection, in diminishing the size of any natural weapons which might be injurious to man; the direct action of man during the life of the animal; and finally the texture and condition of the bones.

Applying these considerations to the Sus palustris from Moosseedorf, it is evident, firstly, that the argument derivable from the number of young specimens loses much of its force on account of the great fertility of the Sow, and the ease with which the young can he found and destroved; secondly, in the number of individuals represented, it is equalled by the Stag, which certainly was never domesticated; thirdly, some bones of very old individuals have been found and some of very young, even of unborn pigs; the smallness of the tusks is, according to M. Rütimeyer, a characteristic of the race and not an evidence of domestication; the bones are of a firm and close texture, and the only cases of decay have arisen from an extreme degradation of the teeth, which would certainly be unlikdy to occur in a domestic animal Finally, none of the teeth show traces of any filing or other preparation, except such as may have taken place after the death of the animal, from all of which reasons M. Rütimeyer infers that the inhabitants of Moosseedorf had not yet succeeded in taming either the Sus scrofa palustris or the Sub scrofa ferus.

M. Rütimeyer has paid great attention to the texture and condition of the bones themselves, and in many cases can from these alone distinguish the species, and even determine whether the bone belonged to a wild or a domesticated animal.

In wild animals the bones are of a firmer and closer texture, there is an indescribable, but to the accustomed eye very characteristic, sculpturing of the external surface, produced by the sharper and more numerous impressions of vessels, and the greater roughness of the surfaces for the attachment of muscles. There is also an exaggeration of all projections and ridges, and a diminution of all indifferent surfaces. In the consideration of the remains of Oxen, these distinctions have proved of the greatest importance. By their assistance, and this is in some respects the most interesting part of the work, M. Rütimeyer has convinced himself that besides the two wild species of Bos, namely the Urus (B. primigenius) and the Aurochs (B. bison or Bison Europeus), three domestic races of Oxen occur in Pileworks.

The first of these is allied to, and in his opinion descended from, the Urus, and he therefore calls it the Primigenius race. This variety occurs in all the Pileworks of the Stone period. The second or Trochoceros race, he correlates with a fossil species described under