Chap. VIII] Cows, SliBEP, Hogs, &c. ITS 



always be fat enough ior fresh pork, and the latter will 

 not; and that, in the tatting, the fonner will not require 

 (weight for weight of animal) more than half the food 

 that the latter will to make them equally fat. 



304. Out of the milk and meal system another mon- 

 sti'ous evil arises. It is seldom that the hogs come to 

 a proper age before they are killed. A hog has not 

 got his growth till he is full two years old. But, who 

 will, or <;an, have the patience to see a hog ealim/ 

 Long- Island sicill for two years ! When a hog is only 

 15 or 10 months old, he will lay on two pounds of fat 

 for every one pound that will, out of the same quantity 

 of food, be laid on by an eight or ten mouths' pig. Is 

 it not thus with every animal? A stout boy will be like 

 a herring upon the very food that would make his fa- 

 ther fat, or kill him. However, this fact is too noto- 

 rious to be insisted on, 



305. Then, the young meat is not so nutritious as the 

 old. Steer-beef is not nearly so good as ox-beef 

 Young wether mutton bears the same proportion of 

 inferiority to old wether mutton. And, what reason is 

 there, that the principle should not hold good as to 

 hog-meat ? In Westphalia, where the fine hams are 

 made, the hogs are never killed under three years old. 

 In France, where I saw the fattest pork I ever saM', 

 they keep their fatting hogs to the same age. In France 

 and Germany, the people do not eat the hog, as hog : 

 they use the hog to put fat into other sorts of meat. 

 They make holes in beef, mutton, veal, turkeys and 

 fowls, and, with a tin tube, draw in bits of fat hog, 

 which they call lard, and, as it is all fat, hence comes 

 it that Ave call the inside fat of a hog, lard. Their beef 

 and mutton and veal would be very poor stuff without 

 the aid of the hog ; but, with that aid, they make them 

 all exceedingly good. Hence it is, that they are in- 

 duced to keep their hogs till they have qtiite done grow- 

 ing ; and, though their sort of hogs is the very tcorst 

 I ever saw, tlieir hog meat Avas the very fattest. The 

 common Aveight in Normandy and Brittany h from six 

 to eight hundred pounds. But, the poor felloAvs there 

 do not slaughter away as the farmers do here, ten or a 

 dozen hogs at a time, so that the sight makes one won- 



