Four Toes?

Why Has A Pig Got

These Little Ones Have Five!

From Our Own Correspondent.

Pt. Moresby, Sept. 12.

11/|R. J. O’MALLEY, patrol officer, who accompanied Mr. Jack Hides on his recent famous patrol from the Strickland to the Purari, was interested to find that pigs presented to the party by the natives of the cultivated valleys of the head waters of the Purari all had five toes.

Further investigations proved that nearly all the pigs of the district were similar in this respect.

Five-toed pigs are not uncommon to Papua; already they have puzzled of ficials in the Delta Division, where they have been found in numbers in soma villages. Mr. C. H. Rich, of the magis terial service, some time ago secured the feet of an adult pig and a piglet, which the Government forwarded to Mr. A. S.

Le Souef, of the Taronga Park Zoo, Syd ney, for examination.

Previously, five-toed pigs in Papua were reported to Mr. Le Soeuf, who was very interested in the discovery. He stated at the time that if the pigs were not freaks, they - showed a reversion of evolution, and that if they were common in a certain district they might have evolved from a throwback, or might have been induced by animals living in swampy grounds extending over a long period.

From the reports of the Hides-O’Mal ley patrol, there seems to have been no swampy grounds in the cultivated val leys where the pigs were encountered, so it may be taken that they show some reversion of evolution.