312 COWS, SHEEP, HOGS, &C. [PART U. 



swill for two years? When a hog is only 15 or 

 16 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 months' pig. Is it not thus with every ani 

 mal ? A stout boy will be like a herring upon 

 the very food that would make his father fat, or 

 kill him. However, this fact is too notorious 

 to be insisted on. 



305. Then, the young meat is not so nutri 

 tious 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 

 saw, they keep their fatting hogs to the same 

 age. In France and Germany, the people dp 

 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 we call the inside fat of a hog, 

 lard. Their beef and mutton and veal would 

 be very poor stuif without the aid of the hog ; 

 but, with that aid, they make them all exceed- 



