PREFACE. 5 



not be far wrong in treating a pig in the same way. And 

 so of other diseases. It should be observed, however, 

 that a pig grows as much in eight months, as a man does 

 in eighteen years. This rapid growth enables the pig 

 either to throw off disease in a few days, or failing in 

 this, the disease soon spreads throughout the whole sys- 

 tem and carries off its victim. Thus typhoid fever is often 

 so rapidly fatal as to be popularly spoken of as " Hog 

 Cholera. " Our first aim, therefore, should be to guard 

 against all hereditary diseases in the selection of pigs for 

 breeding and to exercise great care in maintaining the 

 health and vigor of our swine. 



In preparing this book, I have corresponded with many 

 experienced breeders, and in the appendix have given 

 some extracts from this correspondence. 



We have been asked by a scientific fiiend to call this a 

 book on " the Hog " instead of on the Pig." If it were 

 a work on natural history, hog would be the proper word, 

 but it is purely a practical treatise on domestic swine. A 

 pig is a young hog ; and the aim of this work is to induce 

 farmers to so breed and feed their pigs, that they will be 

 in the pork barrel long before they attain the age of an 

 old-fashioned hog. It is proper to speak of " the wild 

 hog," and there may be varieties of swine so little im- 

 proved as to be hogs stilL Let those who have them call 

 them hogs, but we cannot see the propriety of calling a 

 highly refined Essex or Berkshire pig, a hog. All the 

 modern agricultural writers on swine seem to have adopt- 

 ed this view. Not one of them speak of the improved 

 breeds as hogs. Stephens, in his Book of the Farm, and 

 the writers in Morton's Cyclopedia of Agriculture, treat 

 of pigs, not hogs. And Youatt, Martin, Richardson, 

 Sydney, and Darwin, all speak of domestic swine as pigs, 

 and it is hardly worth while for us to endeavor to change 

 the usuage of the best writers. We have no desire to 

 have our Western friends speak of the " Magie Hogs " as 



