CATTLE AND SHEEP. 27 



however, from far in the teens, dwindled to six, four, and 

 at length our favourite sow produced one. Nor was this 

 all. The roaded bacon three inches thick, for which, 

 when trimmed with beans, we have seen gastronomes of 

 undoubted authority desert farther-fetched dainties, was 

 replaced on our table by six inches of rather flabby fat, 

 unredeemed by lean. So when we could not even save 

 our bacon we gave up the pursuit ; and we are inclined to 

 think that our experience was a sort of epitome of high 

 breeding. A snub-nosed race, called Chinese pigs, or 

 Tunks, have some distinctive marks. They may, for what 

 we know, claim an antiquity coeval with the Shee-king 

 and Shoo-king, though, indeed, we are not precisely aware 

 of the authority on which they are said to have come from 

 " the Flowery Land." They are funny little fellows ; pert 

 and queer in their ways ; very symmetrical ; poor breeders, 

 and not exactly the pigs to furnish contract bacon. Tho 

 Neapolitan, the Portuguese, and the Berkshire pigs have 

 many points in common. For a constant supply of pleas- 

 ing pigs we should select the Lisbon market. They are 

 the only cleanly animals of a domestic nature (we make no 

 exceptions) in Portugal ; very uniform, very symmetrical 

 when fat, and of sufficient activity to get their living in 

 the chestnut-woods during the early part of their lives. 

 To this feeding we should have attributed the delicacy of 

 their pork, if we had not heard, on good authority, that in 

 America mast-fed bacon is very inferior both in firmness 

 and quality to that which is fed on grain. Whether the 

 animal which, by an agreeable alliteration, is called a 

 Hampshire Hog owes any of the celebrity of his bacon t 

 acorns and beech-nuts, we will not pronounce. We are in- 

 clined to attribute a good deal to careful and scientific 

 curing. Pigs, both in their natural and domestic state, 

 deteriorate if exposed to cold. We are told that the wild 

 boars of Barbary, Bengal, and Scinde are much finer 

 animals than those which endure the severity of a northern 

 winter in the forests of Germany. Nature made the pig 



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