OUR HUMBLE HELPERS 



answer than in the case of the dog and the ox. After 

 centuries and centuries of domestication, the first 

 steps in this process of redemption from the wild 

 state have become lost in oblivion. 



" Despite all its improvement the pig still remains 

 a coarse animal, resembling the wild boar in more 

 than one trait. Like the latter, it feeds on anything 

 and everything; and even more than the latter is it 

 addicted to gluttony. The perils attending its wild 

 state no longer existing, it devotes itself unreserv- 

 edly to the gratification of its voracious appetite. 

 The pig is a fat-factory : it lives only to eat, digest, 

 and fatten. Its gluttony extends even to the de- 

 vouring of kitchen refuse, greasy dishwater, nasty 

 leavings, garbage; in fact everything even to ex- 

 crementitious matter. Ill effects can result from its 

 nosing about in filth to satisfy its gluttony, since it 

 is thus liable to a horrible disease of which we will 

 speak later. Not satisfied with acorns and other 

 viands that go to fill its trough, it turns up the earth 

 with its snout in quest of roots, worms, and fat 

 larvae. It is always either sleeping, stretched out on 

 its side in the full enjoyment of digestion, or root- 

 ing in the ground in the hope of some chance ad- 

 ditional tidbit, however small. In the cultivated 

 fields, in prairies and grass-lands, devastation makes 

 rapid progress with such a miner tearing up the 

 ground. To check this mania for excavating, the 

 end of the snout is pierced with two holes through 

 each of which is passed a piece of iron wire, which 

 is then bent into a ring. ' ' 



