No. 



Mr. Phinneij''s Pigs and Piggei'i/. 



89 



na is produced. Indeed, it is surprising' that 

 the quantity and variety of plants should be 

 confined to so limited a space. But when we 

 consider the controling powers of the laws 

 governing the particles of matter, and con- 

 fining their union in organization to certain 

 delinite proportions, every difficulty on that 

 subject naturally vanishes. As all plants 

 grow from seeds or buds, it necessarily follows 

 that the seed or bud is a perfect germ or iru- 

 clus of organization, governed in its forma- 

 tion by the same prevailing laws that per- 

 fected the parent stock during its production 

 —consequently, the seeds or buds of every 

 variety of plant will, in all cases, produce 

 similar plants, although the nourishment, 

 when taken into the general vegetable circu- 

 lation, m.ay be similar in all cases. The pe- 

 culiar assimilating power inherent in each 

 variety of plants must invariably control, in 

 the preparation and arrangement of the parti- 

 cles, the proportions necessary to enable them 

 to assume the form of organization peculiar to 

 the plant. If the buds orgermsof organization 

 of one variety of plant be inoculated into a dif- 

 ferent variety of plant, vegetation continues in 

 sucli bud as freely as it would have done on the 

 parent stock, and all accessions to the growth 

 of such bud, and the fruit produced, will be 

 precisely what it would have been if it had 

 remained on the original stock ; hence it is 

 usual to gather different varieties of fruit 

 from the same tree. 



Mr. PlUiuuey's Pigs and Piggery. 



J. Breck, Esq. — Dear Sir — In compliance 

 with your request, I cheerfully devote a few 

 moments to giving you an account of my pig- 

 gery. I will premise, by the way, that the 

 writer of an article which appeared some 

 montns since in the Yankee Farmer, and 

 which I regret should have found its way into 

 many other papers, has greatly exaggerated 

 the profits of my establishment. I have often 

 stated, and now repeat, tliat the manure from 

 my Iicg pens wnll pay for all the food which I 

 purchase for them: the residue of their feed, 

 by far the greater part, being the produce of 

 my own farm. 



When the average price of corn is one dol- 

 lar per bushel and potatoes thirty-three cents, 

 and pork will bring twelve and a half cents 

 per pound, I have no hesitation in saying that 

 there is a handsome profit in raising pork for 

 the market, provided the hogs be of the best 

 breeds. With such breeds I have always 

 found that four quarts of Indian or barlev 

 meal, with an equal quantity of apples, pump- 

 kins, potatoes or other roots well cooked, will 

 give two pounds of pork. At this rate it will 

 be perceived that there is a profit on the pork 

 at the above price, e.xclusive of the manure 



the hogs make, which is of great value to the 

 farmer, but by no means equal to the whole 

 nor even half the expense of feeding. 



My breeds are principally of the Berkshire 

 full bloods, and a cross of this breed with the 

 Mackey breed. Tliis cross I have found de- 

 cidedly preferable to the full bloods of either. 

 J have an imported sow of the " Essex half 

 blacks," being a descendant of the Berkshire, 

 and highly spoken of by English breeders. 

 The Mackey pigs were imported into this 

 country fi-om England some fifteen or twenty 

 years ago, by Capt. Mackey, of Boston, and 

 till watiiin a few years were decidedly the 

 best stock in New England, and perhaps in 

 America. When first imported. Captain 

 Mackey, on his farm at Weston, not unlre- 

 quenlly brought them up to six hundred 

 pounds, at the age of eighteen months. In 

 all the essential points, such as maturing 

 early, lightness of offal, greater weight in the 

 more profitable parts, thinness of skin, &c., 

 they greatly exceeded the Berkshire breed. 

 But by breed hig in and in, as it is termed, 

 they had greatly degenerated, and become 

 weak and feeble in constitution, small in size, 

 ill-shaped, and in some instances deformed. 

 With the exception of the human species, no 

 animal degenerates so rapidly by this practice 

 of breeding in and in, as the hog. Judicious 

 crossing is the only way by whicii a good 

 breed of swine can be kept up and preserved. 

 By proper attention to this principle, all good 

 and valuable qualities of a breed may be pre- 

 served and the bad rejected ; — without it the 

 best breeds will soon become worthless. — 

 With a view of restoring some of the good 

 properties of the Mockey, I tried crossing 

 them with various breeds, and with none have 

 succeeded so well as with the Berkshire. 

 The produce of this cross possesses all the 

 good and valuable points of the Mackey, unit- 

 ed to the health, vigor and size, without any 

 of the coarseness of the Berkshire. The best 

 pigs, however, that I have ever raised, and I 

 can say without hesitation, the best I have 

 ever seen, were produced by putting a full 

 blood Berkshire boar to a sow which was a 

 cross of the Mackey with a "Mocko," a New 

 York breed, the progeny being half Berkshire, 

 a quarter Mackey, and a quarter Mocko. 



My stock of fattening swine usually con- 

 sists of about one hundred, besides about fifty 

 stores. My time for slaughtering is in Feb- 

 ruary and March, when half my pigs are at 

 the age of fifteen and sixteen months, being- 

 the fall and winter litters of the previous 

 year, the other half being the pigs of the 

 spring next previous to killing, and are at the 

 age of nine and ten months. The former in 

 years past have weighed from three hundred 

 and fifty to four hundred pounds, and in some 

 instances as high as five Imndred pounds. 



