sus. 



733 



the fall in the forest a most abundant time for the 

 wild hogs. Then in the clumps, by the margins of the 

 pools and the banks of the tangling and intercepted 

 streams, there were many succulent roots ; and these 

 roots must have furnished a supply both where the 

 autumnal produce was exhausted, and during the heat 

 of the summer. In all places where the people inha- 

 bited the woods, and there were wild hogs in them, 

 these hogs very naturally presented themselves as 

 an abundant and easily acquired article of food. 



Canning's keenly satirical account of the origin of 

 cruelty is thus, in all probability, something more 

 than the mere production of poetic fancy. Man, in a 

 state of perfect innocence, and with hands all-un- 

 stained by the blood of a single living creature, ranged 

 the \vild woods, contending with monkeys and mac- 

 caws for " fruits in their seasons," and with the wild 

 hogs for fern and other roots, when no fruit was to 

 be found. Whether the rivalship occasioned any jea- 

 lousy of the hog, and beech mast had any influence 

 in making man more cruel and carnivorous is not 

 said, though it is not impossible, and would add to 

 the truth of the application and the force of the moral. 

 But upon one day of more than ordinary desire, man 

 eyed with complacence the sleek rotundity of a fat 

 hog; and the longer that he gazed, the more ardent 

 waxed his desire of making a mess of the unsuspecting 

 animal. Invention, for Canning did not call in the aid 

 of the devil to bear the burden of the crime, if crime 

 it was, set about to find means of making a meal of 

 the hog. The bow was made and strung, the arrow 

 was pointed ; the bow was bent, the arrow set on the 

 string and, 



" He twangs the bow, the hissing: arrow flies, 

 And darkness seals the gentle porker's eyes." 



Once tasting the luscious flesh of the hog, man could 

 no longer be contented with the beech mast and the 

 acorns, but soon began to " kill and eat" the whole 

 of living Nature around him. Nor was he content till he 

 had numbered the flesh of his own race among the 

 dainties of his board. As he became more refined, 

 the disposition to eat his fellow men became weaker ; 

 but the killing propensity has continued, and the 

 slaughter of mankind, so that it is carried on upon a 

 scale of sufficient grandeur, is above all others the work 

 for which man is especially " covered with glory." 



Such, in part at least, is the outline of the fable. 

 In so far as man is concerned, we leave the propriety 

 of the application to the judgment of the reader ; 

 but there seems every reason to believe that the hog 

 was the first animal of any size, inhabiting the land, 

 which formed a regular portion of the food of the 

 human race in a state of nature. 



The hogs are conveniently divided into two sub- 

 genera, those of the eastern continent. The first are 

 the true hogs, or members of the genus Sus ; and 

 the second are the peccaries, or members of the 

 genus Dicotylus. We shall briefly notice both of 

 them in their order. 



Sus. The true hogs have six incisive teeth in 

 each ol the jaws, the canines in the male long, and 

 projecting out of the mouth, and the cheek-teeth 

 twenty-four or twenty-eight, the anterior compressed, 

 and the posteriors with tuberculated crowns. None 

 of the cheek-teeth have the bone and the enamel 

 alternating with each other, so as to form a grinding 

 surface, as in the ruminantia, and in those pachyder- 

 mata that are exclusively herbivorous. They have 



but one case of bone, with the enamel placed upon it 

 as it is in human teeth. The jaws have no lateral or 

 grinding motion ; they merely open and shut, and 

 the food is divided by different strokes of the jaws 

 against each other. In consequence of this, hogs 

 are very clumsy feeders, and scatter their food about. 

 Their mouths are not well adapted for eating any 

 more than they are for grinding ; and thus, when 

 their food is in large masses, they hash and mangle 

 at it in a very rude way. If it is tough, they use the 

 fore foot for holding on, while they seize with the 

 teeth, and tear it asunder by an upward jerk of the 

 head. The structure of the head, and the great 

 depth and strength of the neck, fit them well for the 

 performance of this kind of labour, which is, in fact, 

 partly the same as that which they have to perform 

 when they root up the ground in quest of the vege- 

 table stores that are below the surface. The hind 

 toes and their hoofs are well developed, and contri- 

 bute much to bearing the animals up when they 

 range the soft and marshy grounds in quest of the 

 roots of plants. 



It appears somewhat singular that the flesh of the 

 hog was prohibited in the ceremonial of the Jewish 

 law, which, borrowing from the Jews of course, as 

 much of the koran is borrowed, has been adopted bv 

 the Mahommedans. Il does not appear, however, 

 that this part of the law was at any time very rigidly 

 observed, especially in the later period of the history 

 of the Jews as a nation ; for we find swine and swine- 

 herds often mentioned in the historical parts of the 

 New Testament as subjects of familiar illustration. 

 This matter, however, being wholly of a ceremonial 

 nature, and without any reason that we can assign, 

 can make no part of the useful history of the animal. 

 We shall, therefore, proceed to a very brief notice of 

 the species. Of these there are three, besides some 

 apparent varieties, and innumerable varieties or dif- 

 ferences of breed among the domestic ones. Of one 

 species we have already given a short account in the 

 article BABYROUSSA. this work, to which the reader 

 is referred ; and we have also given an account of 

 another, which is sometimes considered as only a 

 species of this subgenus, in the article PHASCOCH^VUS, 

 to which also we refer, and confine the present notice 

 to the remaining ones. 



The Wild Hog, or Wild Soar (S. scrofa). This 

 is generally regarded as the parent stock of all the 

 tame breeds in Europe, the north of Africa and Asia, 

 except the extreme east, and that it is the same 

 species with them hardly admits of a doubt, though 

 there are climatal differences of the wild one, just as 

 there are still greater differences in the domesticated, 

 arising from the influence of climate and treatment 

 jointly. But these very circumstances show the 

 flexibility of the animal, and, consequently, that it 

 can be introduced with advantage into almost any 

 climate that mankind can inhabit ; and the many and 

 variable kinds of foods upon which it can subsist 

 render it still more pliable in domestication, and 

 therefore more valuable. 



The wild hog is all over of a blackish-brown colour, 

 sometimes brindled by the brown being redder in one 

 part and blacker in another ; and when these dif- 

 ferences occur, they are generally in cross stripes, 

 which are not strongly marked, but pass into each 

 other. There are very long and coarse bristles upon 

 the spine for almost its whole length, which are par- 

 tially credible when the animal is excited, and have 



