I02 SWINE IN AMERICA 



back and keep the rope tight ; one man stands astride the 

 hog and puts a hardwood stick about one and one-fourth 

 inclies thick in the boar's mouth ; takes hold of both ends, 

 pulls it back as far as he can and holds it there. Another 

 man should then put some straw on the ground, get down 

 on his knees, and, with a three-cornered file, file a good 

 notch in each corner of the tusk ; then put the point of 

 an iron wedge in one of the notches and tap it with a 

 hammer, when the tusk will break squarely off. He 

 would then, with a flat file, smooth the'stump down to the 

 jaw. He thinks if this procedure is followed the hog 

 will give thanks and say, 'You have done a good job and 

 it did not hurt much.' " 



THE SIRE MOKE THAN HALF THE HERD 



In his valuable work. "Principles of Breeding," Prof. 

 Eugene Davenport says : "It has become a proverb that 

 the sire is half the herd. He is far more than that. He 

 is half of the first generation, three-fourths of the next, 

 seven-eighths of the third, and so on, until, if judicious 

 selection be maintained for a few generations, the char- 

 acter of the herd will be fixed by the sire alone. This 

 being true, the folly of maintaining a sire with but two 

 or three high-class females is evident ; he should have 

 larger opportunity. All this means that, as a beginning, 

 numbers are of more consequence relatively than quality 

 on the side of the dam, and that if the breeder must 

 choose between the two it is better to put a given amount 

 of money into a good number of plain females than into 

 a smaller number of high quality, but that in all cases the 



