or Zoological Becollectzons, 399 



St. Anthony was the patron of swine, and celebrated for 

 curing such diseases of the skin as were considered to be of 

 swinish origin or nature, as leprosy, scrofula, and erysipelas, 

 or Saint Anthony's fire. His monks were thence called, in 

 derision, St. Anthony's pigs ; and thence originated the 

 ironical taunt of " please the pigs ;" and, as the gambols of 

 young swine are singularly awkward, any frolic more than 

 usually ridiculous was compared to a " tantony pig," and a 

 stupid rustic was called a tony. In the monkish legends, it 

 is related, that, when St. Anthony was once sorely beset 

 by the temptations of Satan, he defied him by commanding 

 him to shear his hogs ; who, finding them more clamorous and 

 troublesome than productive, exclaimed, that there was great 

 cry and little wool. 



Swine, if they are fed on fermented grains, or the must of 

 cider, are subject to fits of the gout ; and in large distilleries 

 get rapidly fat and bloated, by being kept in a state of con- 

 stant intoxication. The hog, although apparently shapeless 

 and unwieldy, is of considerable swiftness and agility : for the 

 hind legs have two bones in each, whereas there is but one in 

 horned cattle. 



The hog, as a beast of chase, forms the armorial bearing of 

 many families. It constituted the arms of King Richard the 

 Third : and in his reign, when great enormities were com- 

 mitted by himself, RatclifF, Catesby, and Lovel whose crest 

 was a talbot or kind of hound, an unhappy wit was hanged 

 for the following not inelegant pasquinade : — 



" The rat, the cat, and Lovel the dog, 

 Govern all England under the hog.'* 



In his reign the English coin was first introduced into Ire- 

 land, whence an English shilling is in the sister island still 

 called a hog: and after his reign, the popular sign of the 

 hog in armour probably originated, in allusion to his un- 

 shapely person and his arms or crest. The bristles are made 

 into brushes ; and the skin of the wild boar is used in Spain 

 to hold wine, whence the origin of our word hogshead, a cor- 

 ruption of hog's hide. 



In the casting of metallic ores, the red-hot fusion runs from 

 the furnace down a straight groove, and branches on each 

 side into shorter ones, supposed by the workmen to resemble 

 a sow suckling her litter ; whence the longer piece is called 

 the sow, and the shorter ones pig iron or pig lead. 



A learned monk wrote a long poem in praise of pigs, 

 every word of which begins with the letter P : — 

 " Plaudite porcelli porcorum pigra propago." 



