PIGS. 67 



warm milk and slops on their private account. This 

 will grease the slips for their final launch into life, 

 which should take place as soon as they have 

 shivered through the ninth week, when the ma- 

 tron should be thinking of baby-linen again. The 

 rule of weaning with the wild sow is simply to go 

 dry. She ceases to suckle when her milk fails. She 

 does not, however, set her litter adrift then. They 

 are allowed a knife and fork at the parental board 

 until able individually and single-handed to encounter 

 their normal enemy the wolf. Hence the French 

 sportsman, with the flourish of his jovial horn, starts 

 from her lair in the beech forest the she-sanglier 

 with oftentimes a pack of porkers of all sizes behind 

 her, in number equal to a small town's national 

 school. She has, however, but one litter a year, and 

 that born usually in June. 



A sow that can rear five families of ten in two 

 years, Mr. Stephens calculates to return a yield of 

 251. The skin of swine, Mr. Youatt observes, " is 

 soft, fine, and delicate, and bears no slight resem- 

 blance to the skin of the human being." The cannibal 

 epicure is said to have likened his favourite food to 

 roast pork, and makes a distinction even as to hue. 

 " At Tanna/^the Rev. Mr. Turner, in his work on 

 Polynesia, writes, "cannibal connoisseurs prefer a 

 black man to a white one. The latter, they say, 

 tastes salt ! " The diseases, too, of swine, consump- 

 tion, measles, dyspepsia, scorbutic affections, and 

 their causes, are also analogous to those of man. 



It is on record that the sow will get away about 

 farrowing-time and take refuge under a pea-stack, or 



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