736 



SUS. 



of any other animals ; this too on the supposition 

 that the flesh of the hogs is all of good quality. The 

 tendency that hogs have to fatten in the autumn and 

 early winter even of the first year, and the superiority 

 of young pork, are greatly in favour of this. During 

 the time that intervenes between the calf and the 

 bullock, and the lamb and the sheep, neither of these 

 animals can be " forced '' into fat, except at great ex- 

 pense ; and as this is working in opposition to the 

 natural tendency of the animals, the flesh when fatted 

 is of inferior quality. Not so with the hog ; for with 

 it the art merely seconds nature, and consequently 

 the quality is good. 



There is another advantage : oxen and sheep must 

 have range and free air in the period of their growth, as 

 they are both ranging animals in a state of nature, other- 

 wise they are diseased and absolutely unwholesome. 

 Neither can you obtain the flesh of hogs of the very 

 highest flavour and quality, unless they too are some- 

 times in the open air, but even then they require a very 

 limited range ; and good and wholesome pork may be 

 grown and fed in a state of perfect confinement. While 

 the hog is growing, the food, if clean and in sufficient 

 quantity, is not very material ; because in the natural 

 state of the animals their summer food is not of the 

 most nutritious kind. The fruits of the preceding 

 year are all gone, and the roots which were albumi- 

 nous in the winter are exhausted by the operation of 

 sending up the stem, the leaves, and the flowers of 

 the year ; so that during that season the hogs are in 

 a great measure reduced to the condition of herbivo- 

 rous animals ; and if they are in a state of confine- 

 ment, clover or green tares, or any other of the suc- 

 culent plants grown for stock, will keep them on till 

 the season of plenty comes ; that is, till they come in 

 for their share of the plenty of the harvest, a share 

 which, when they are not there to get it, is almost 

 entirely lost. 



To the cottager who has a garden, as every cot- 

 tager ought to have, not merely for its direct advan- 

 tage as supplying many necessaries which could not 

 otherwise be had, but because it attaches the man to 

 his home, and prevents him from spending his leisure 

 hours in an improper manner to the cottager the 

 hog is a very valuable animal, and will always pay the 

 rent of the cottage, if properly managed, and of the 

 right breed. The breed is a very important matter, 

 because the same food that will fatten one for the 

 market will barely suffice to keep another alive. 



There are many worse ways of distinguishing one 

 country from another than by their pigs ; and the 

 same applies even to different districts of the same 

 country. In Britain there are three of what may be 

 called leading or typical breeds ; but they are so 

 much blended by crossings, or changed by differences 

 of situation and treatment, that it is not easy to draw 

 the distinction between them in every case. Two 

 resemble, in many particulars, the wild boar of 

 Europe, and may have been procured from that 

 animal when it was indigenous in the island. Of 

 these two breeds the one appears to be the result of 

 breeding in the rude parts of the country, where 

 there were abundance of acorns and other wild 

 fruits, and good shelter and keep at all seasons. 

 These are generally called the Berkshire breed ; but 

 they are distributed over many parts of the country, 

 and broken into a great number of varieties. These 

 are generally of a reddish colour, with black spots, 

 and large ears hanging over their eyes. They arc 



short-legged small -boned animals, and much disposed 

 to fatten ; but they are not well adapted for bleak 

 situations, or for ranging over rough ground?. 



The other breed, which we may consider as more 

 immediately referable to the wild boar, has charac- 

 ters rather the reverse of these, or rather different 

 from them. The body is long, and so also are the 

 legs, and the bones are large. This is the breed of 

 the less fertile districts, and it is usually styled the 

 Highland or Irish breed ; but it does not appear to 

 have been more originally confined to these parts 

 of the empire, or to either of them, although it is 

 unquestionably the best adapted for cold and rough 

 places, or where "much systematic attention cannot 

 be paid. 



The third of the leading breeds, which may be 

 considered as originally distinct, that is, that no one 

 of these has been bred out of the other, by attention 

 to circumstances on the part of the breeder, is what 

 is usually called the Chinese breed. It is generally 

 of a black colour ; but that is not the essential dis- 

 tinction ; for, though colour is perhaps more constant 

 in hogs than in some other cultivated animals, it is 

 not absolutely constant. The permanent characters 

 of the Chinese breed are the short legs and body 

 and the great roundness and depth of the latter, in 

 consequence of which the belly nearly touches the 

 ground when the animal walks. It is of little conse- 

 quence whether this breed was or was not imported 

 into this country from China ; for we do not happen 

 to know so much about the forests of that country as 

 to be able to say that this, or indeed any other spe- 

 cies of hog in the wild state, is to be found in them 

 or not. We know that all its leading characters are 

 different from those of the wild hog of Europe, and 

 that they resemble those of the hogs that were found 

 wild in the islands of the Pacific when those islands 

 were first visited by Europeans, and when there was 

 not even any traditional history of their existence 

 among any of the nations of continental Asia. That, 

 under these circumstances, China, or any other part 

 of the continent, should have received a stock of 

 hogs from those islands, is very unlikely we may 

 say impossible ; and this appears more strongly when 

 we bear in mind that those isles of the Pacific, instead 

 of being fragments of a former continent, of which 

 the greater part has been submerged, are apparently 

 newer formations than the continent of Asia. They 

 are, for the most part, either volcanic, or composed 

 of coral rock, both of which require the sea for their 

 foundation. In the meantime, however, we have to 

 do with the hogs only, and not with the question of 

 their descent from a wild stock in any part of the 

 world. They agree best in character with the 

 Oriental ones, of which we have been speaking ; and 

 therefore, the best way of getting rid of the difficulty, 

 which we cannot solve, is to refer them to that origin. 

 Nor is this referring wholly without its use, for it 

 points out the situation in which the animals can be 

 reared to the greatest advantage. They are found 

 native in places which have what may be called a 

 perpetual summer, and where wild fruits and farina- 

 ceous roots can always be obtained in the delightful 

 shade of the woods, with very little motion from place 

 to place, or other exertion on the part of the animals. 

 They are evidently formed for such places by the 

 comparatively small development of their organs of 

 motion ; and thus, in what may be called the pure 

 state, they are quite unfit for rough and bare places; 



