PIGS. 09 



excuse my reminding you further that you should 

 get rid of your porkers before the hot weather comes, 

 that is, during the month of April at latest. Further, 

 let me add, that pigs fatten quickest in autumn, as 

 food is then most plentiful, and they lose less by the 

 pores than during the summer months. Quickest of 

 all they lay on flesh during a slight frost, as do 

 rabbits, long-billed birds, &c, the thriving being 

 probably due to " the gentle check which the cold 

 throws upon insensible perspiration." (White.) It is 

 right to mention, for the benefit of the enthusiastic, 

 that exhibiting in the pig classes at any of the great 

 shows is simply gambling ; there are such multi^ 

 tudes bred now, so perfect in shape and quality, that 

 really the judge's decision depends upon the mere 

 question of a few inches this way or that way, the 

 plain deduction from which is, that he who breeds a 

 parcel only yearly can rarely afford to break a lance 

 with one who counts his hostj as did Xerxes at 

 Salamis, " by thousands." Nor simply domestic 

 have been the services of this useful animal. Be- 

 sides the creditable share it takes in our household 

 economy, it has played an important part in the 

 world's history* Detested by the Israelite ; its sale 

 prohibited within the walls of Christian Eome • its 

 grease upon the cartridges at least the nominal 

 cause of the late disastrous Indian mutiny ; there 

 remains beyond the memorable fact that it was 

 owing altogether to the value the Chinese set upon 

 the pig in life and death that the progress of Ma- 

 homedanism was arrested on the borders of the 

 Celestial Empire. It did, in fact, for China, what 



