456 THE COMMON HOG, 



of their attaining so great an age, since it is by- 

 no means either profitable or convenient to keep 

 them to the full extent of their time. A gentle- 

 man of Selborne, in Hampshire, kept an half- 

 bred Bantam Sow, whose belly literally swept the 

 ground, till she was advanced to her seventeenth 

 year; and at this period she began to exhibit 

 some signs of old age, by the decay of her teeth, 

 and the decline of her fertility. This animal af- 

 forded a surprising instance of the extremely pro- 

 lific nature of Swine. For about ten years, she 

 regularly produced two litters in the year, each 

 consisting of about ten, and once of above twenty 

 Pigs : but in the latter case, as there were nearly 

 double the number of Pigs to that of the teats, 

 many, of course, died. At the age of fifteen, her 

 litter began to be reduced to four or five; and 

 such a litter she exhibited when in her fatting- 

 pen. At a moderate computation, this Sow was 

 allowed to have been the fruitful parent of no 

 less than three hundred young ones! She was 

 killed in the spring of 1775*. 



The profits that arise from the breeding of 

 Swine are so universally acknowledged, that there 

 are few, even of our peasantry, who are not 

 anxious to keep and fatten *one or two of these 



* White's Works in Natural History, i. p. 359. 



animals. 



