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SoliMboofeb Iboge. 



By Mrs. Alice Bodington. 



IN the present state of controversy as to the inheritance of 

 parental peculiarities, the account in the Americati Naturalist^ 

 for May, 1889, of several well-authenticated instances of 

 solid-hoofed hogs, is particularly interesting. The first instances 

 of this new departure in the annals of pigdom were reported from 

 Texas, in 1878. The breed was already ^^ so firmly established that 



no tendency to revert to the normal form 

 was observable^ and in the cross of a 

 solid-hoofed boar, with a sow of the 

 ordinary type, a majority of the litter 

 had the peculiarity of the sire apparent." 

 Mr. Auld, the contributor of the 

 paper, says, that a similar case had 

 just been reported to him from Sioux 

 City, Iowa. The owner seemed quite 

 alive to the peculiarities of his pigs, 

 and had been breeding from them for 

 some time ; he advertises them for sale, 

 " not alone as curiosities, but, in a 

 commercial sense, as a valuable produc- 

 tion for mankind." They had suffered 

 no losses from the diseases prevalent in 

 the district for years past. 



A correspondent of the Rural New 



Yorker not only writes from Cottonville, 



Louis., about these " mule-footed hogs," 



but very considerately sends a foot, 



as a curiosity which he had " never seen 



before, nor even heard of." An exact 



drawing of this foot has been made. 



The editor of the Rural Neiu Yorker adds a note to this effect — 



" We have seen several of these ' mule-footed ' hogs. In a small 



Foot of Solid-hoofed Hog 

 from Louisiana. 



