14 SWINE IN AMERICA 



a benefactor, contributing a wide variety of meats, amorg 

 them the most tootlisome known to the epicure, and 

 other products essential to the best tables, to commerce 

 and to the trades. The hog's disposition has yielded to 

 the influence of good breeding and changed from that 

 of the outlaw, ready for conflict with man or beast, to 

 the peaceable temj^erament belonging with propriety to 

 the barnyard resident. His conformation has been 

 molded by skillful methods from bony, angular uncouth- 

 ness into a structure of massive width, depth and thick- 

 ness, affording a marvelous yield of pork and lard. 

 Incidentally, by domestication and generations of breed- 

 ing him for early maturity and quick fattening, the 

 length of his intestines has been increased, it is claimed 

 by scientists, more than 130 per cent 



EFFECT OF ENVIRONMENT 



Swine are as susceptible as other anmials to the in- 

 fluences of environment, and three or four generations 

 cover a period long enough to bring about great changes 

 in them. Experiments made at the Wisconsin station 

 in crossing the wild or Razor-Back hogs and their crosses 

 with the improved and approved breeds showed that a 

 marked improvement in appearance and quality in the 

 wild hogs' progeny was possible, although in constitu- 

 tion and gains of flesh they did not compare with pure- 

 breds. The second generation, as may be seen by the 

 illustration at the beginning of this chapter, does not 

 give marked evidence of Razor-Back ancestry. Yet 

 when cholera struck the station herds these supposedly 



