NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 207 
IED DG, Ror oe OS XT: 
TO THE SAME, 
THE natural term of an hog’s life is little known, and the reason 
is plain—because it is neither profitable nor convenient to keep 
that turbulent animal to the full extent of its time : however, my 
neighbour, a man of substance, who had no occasion to study 
every little advantage to a nicety, kept an half-bred bantam-sow, 
who was as thick as she was long, and whose belly swept on the 
ground till she was advanced to her seventeenth year, at which 
period she showed some tokens of age by the decay of her teeth 
and the decline of her fertility. 
For about ten years this prolific mother produced two litters in 
the year of about ten at a time, and once above twenty at a litter ; 
but, as there were near double the number of pigs to that of teats 
many died. From long experience in the world this female was 
grown very sagacious and artful. When she found occasion to 
converse with a boar she used to open all the intervening gates, 
and march, by herself, up to a distant farm where one was kept ; 
and when her purpose was served would return by the same means. 
At the age of about fifteen her litters began to be reduced to four 
or five; and such a litter she exhibited when in her fatting-pen. 
She proved, when fat, good bacon, juicy, and tender; the rind, or 
sward, was remarkably thin. At a moderate computation she was 
allowed to have been the fruitful parent of three hundred pigs: a 
prodigious instance of fecundity in so large a quadruped! She 
was killed in spring 1775. 
I am, &c. 
