THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART XI. 643 



for food after they attain any age. While boar hunting was in its palmy 

 days, a particular dog was cultivated for the sport which was of great valu*? 

 and it is said that the full grown, wild hog could give an Arab courser or a 

 fox hound an equal chase for twenty or thirty minutes, after which gen- 

 erally he showed signs of hostility and often inflicted serious wounds to 

 his pursuers. 



So great was the fecundity of swine in Virginian forests that in eight- 

 een years after the founding of Jamestown by the English and introduc- 

 tion of swine by them, the inhabitants were compelled to palisade the town 

 to keep them out and history tells us that for some years after it seemed 

 to be a question whether the white man, the Indian or the swine were 

 going to take possession of the new world. 



The breeding and management of swine is one of, if not the most im- 

 portant agricultural interests of the great west and to be successful none 

 but the best breeds should be allowed on the farm. 



The fecundity of swine leaves no excuse for holding to a bad breed 

 of swine. A good male hog of any breed can be bought so reasonable that 

 no one can afford to raise anything but the best of its kind. There is no 

 class of farm stock that pays better as between indifferent and good breeds 

 than hogs and the wonder is that in some sections of the country farmers 

 still cling to a breed of grunters that will always greet you with a snort 

 and a boh-o-o and which no filling can fill fully, a match for the average 

 dog. always ready to eat anything that falls in their way, even to a half 

 grown kid, but which when wanted for meat are nowhere to be found. 



There is no class of stock that will respond to good general care and 

 management better than the hog. We see men today that seem to have a 

 fascination for nice horses or for feeding cattle, men who will throw all 

 their thought and energies to producing these kinds of stock which is all 

 right in its place but how few farmers get down to their best on a drove 

 of hogs. When we consider the origin of the hog of today in his natural 

 state when it took him from two to five years to develop, when his destruc- 

 tive habits made him a menace to the community in which he dwelt and 

 made him cost more than he was worth when he was developed, and you 

 did not know whether it would be you or your neighbor that would get 

 him at last and compare him with the hog of today in all his ease and 

 comfort, and development, we may well say, "Behold what man hath 

 wrought." I have often said, and I think facts justify the assertion, that 

 there is no industry in the great west that interests so many men and 

 helps to make so many homes as the hog of today. I feel that there is no 

 branch of western farming if gone into intelligently and persistently that 

 will yield a quicker, a surer or a larger return than the raising of good 

 hogs. There are many products of the farm that cannot be utilized by 

 swine and one cannot keep up the fertility of a large farm with hogs alone, 

 yet the fact remains that when you sell your hogs the balance is almost 

 always on the right side of the ledger while in the case of cattle one has 

 to hunt for some one else to help him to let loose, and when he does let go 

 he wonders what it was that hit him, and in regard to the breeding of 

 swine it is as in almost anything else, nothing else beats a good start and 



