194 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



Thus far it is plain that the deprivation of masculine vigour 

 puts a stop to the growth of those parts or appendages that are 

 looked upon as its insignia. But the ingenious Mr. Lisle, in his 

 book on husbandry, carries it much further ; for he says that the 

 loss of those insignia alone has sometimes a strange effect on the 

 ability itself : he had a boar so fierce and venereous, that, to pre- 

 vent mischief, orders were given for his tusks to be broken off. 

 No sooner had the beast suffered this injury than his powers 

 forsook him, and he neglected those females to whom before he 

 was passionately attached, and from whom no fences could 

 restrain him. 



LETTER XXXIII To THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON 



THE natural term of a hog's life is little known, and the reason 

 is plain because it is neither profitable nor convenient to keep 

 that turbulent animal to the full extent of its time : however, my 

 neighbour, a man of substance, who had no occasion to study 

 every little advantage to a nicety, kept a half bred Bantam-sow, 

 who was as thick as she was long, and whose belly swept on the 

 ground, till she was advanced to her seventeenth year ; at which 

 period she showed some tokens of age by the decay of her teeth 

 and the decline of her fertility. 



For about ten years this prolific mother produced two litters 

 in the year of about ten at a time, and once above twenty at a 

 utter ; but, as there were near double the number of pigs to that 

 of teats, many died. From long experience in the world this 

 female was grown very sagacious and artful ; when she found 

 occasion to converse with a boar she used to open all the inter- 

 vening gates, and march, by herself, up to a distant farm where 

 one was kept ; and when her purpose was served would return 

 by the same means. At the age of about fifteen her litters began 

 to be reduced to four or five ; and such a litter she exhibited 

 when in her fatting-pen. She proved, when fat, good bacon, 

 juicy, and tender ; the rind, or sward, was remarkably thin. At 

 a moderate computation she was allowed to have been the fruit- 

 ful parent of three hundred pigs : a prodigious instance of fe- 

 cundity in so large a quadruped ! She was killed in spring 1775. 



I am, &c. 



