No. 8. 



The Chester and Delaware-County Hog. 



249 



THE CHESTER AND DELAWARE-COUNTY HOG. 



The above cut is the portrait of a sow of this distinguished and highly valued breed, 

 drawn from life, and engraved by those excellent artists, Mumford and Brother, expressly 

 for our work. The measurement of this fine animal was 6 feet 9 inches long, from the tip 

 of the nose to the root of the tail, and 6 feet in circumference immediately behind the fore 

 legs. Her colour was perfect white, with a softness and silkiness of hair scarcely ever 

 before witnessed, while her great length and depth of carcass, together with a breadth across 

 the back and loins enormous, were such as to satisfy the most craving appetite for monstrous 

 hogs. A sketcli was first taken when she was heavy in pig with her fourth litter; in an 

 adjo'ining pen on the right, was a daughter, second only in size to herself, with a litter of ten 

 pigs, and in that on the left, were her spring litter of pigs, fifteen in number, she having 

 brought up seventeen, two having been sent to New Orleans as specimens of the Chester- 

 county white hog, of which so much has been said. But before the sketch could be fully 

 completed, she had farrowed sixteen figs, and her death followed within the space of three 

 or four days of that event. Her very peculiar character and fine points, however, have been 

 traced by the hand of our draftsman with the most perfect exactness, and exhibit a speci- 

 men of" a Chester and Delaware-county hog," such as the advocates for that breed might 

 well be proud of. It will readily be perceived that this fine animal was not allied to the no 

 bone breed, nay, that she " had a head of her own," as honest John Lawrence says, and that 

 she was able to carry it too; nor was her gigantic carcass supported upon four "spermaceti 

 canJh^s !" her symmetry of form and proportions were perfectly in keeping, and it was a 

 fact that when she lay down, she was able to rise without assistance — which could not have 

 been the case with nineteen-twentieths of those we see portrayetl, with the assurance that 

 the likeness is perfect. Many of these fine deep-sided, long-bodied white hogs may be met 

 with in the adjoining counties of Pennsylvania, as also in New Jersey; but to those who 

 have been acquainted with the best of that breed, their peculiarities are as marked as the 

 old English breeds — the Berkshire, the Hampshire, the Lancashire, or the Ryswick, none 

 of which, however, ever exhibited a more perfect specimen of what such a hog ought to be, 

 than the individual portrayed above. She was owned by a person named Montgomery, who 

 refused .*i^70 for her and her seventeen pigs the last year, but her progeny was not worthy 

 of lier, the sire of the brood having nothing to recommend him but his length of carcass and 

 white colour, and his ability to subsist on almost nothing — a grazier indeed, coarse and 

 heavy in the ofl'al. although boasting of the cognomen " The Great Western!" The cha- 

 racter of the old Berkshire and the present Hampshire (see pp. 89, 121 of the Cab. vol. 5, 

 for portraits) is, that the meat when cut up exhibits the same thickness, or very nearly so, 

 on the sides and belly as on the back; producing what is called streaky bacon in extraor- 

 dinary proportion, with the rind by no means thin, but gelatinous, and the whole carcass 

 cellular, and remarkably delicate in texture. 



