NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 213 



tremendous tone, yet they low in a shrill high key. Capons have 

 small combs and gills, and look pallid about the head, like pullets ; 

 they also walk without any parade, and hover chickens like hens. 

 Barrow-hogs have also small tusks like sows. 



Thus far it is plain that the deprivation of masculine vigour 

 puts a stop to the growth of those parts or appendages that are 

 looked upon as its insignia. But the ingenious Mr. Lisle, in his 

 book on husbandry, carries it much farther ; for he says that the 

 loss of those insignia alone has sometimes a strange effect on the 

 ability itself: he had a boar so fierce and venereous, that, to 

 prevent mischief, orders were given for his tusks to be broken 

 off. No sooner had the beast suffered this injury than his powers 

 forsook him, and he neglected those females to whom before he 

 was passionately attached, and from whom no fences would 

 restiain him. 



LETTER XXXIII. 



THE natural term of a 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 a 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 inter- 

 vening gates, and march, by herself, up to a distant farm where 

 one was kept ; and when her purpose was served would return by 



