No. 6. 



Berkshire Hogs. 



181 



To the Editor of the Farmers' Cabinet. 

 Berkshires, no longer Berkshires. 



Mr. Editor, — I am an old hog--bree(ler, 

 and have always supposed that I knew a thing 

 or two, but I confess that I am now all at sea 

 on that subject. The time was when a good 

 hog was not measured by the number of 

 white feet which he possessed, or the quan- 

 tity of white hair that he sported in his tail, 

 but by something of much more importance : 

 I find, however, we were all wrong — no 

 Berkshire can be a Berkshire with less than 

 three white feet and a white top to his tail — 

 "so says the book, and therefore it is true." 



Now, I have observed, through a long life, 

 the truth of an old aphorism, which I used to 

 write, as a copy, when a boy at school — 

 "what is violent is seldom permanent" — and 

 the merino, the morus, and now the Berkshire 

 mania, all are proofs of the truth of the old 

 adage ; they have all been too violent to be per- 

 manent, and should be held in remembrance, 

 as a warning against future speculations. 



Well, then, Berkshires are no longer Berk- 

 shires, but improved Berkshires ! So they 

 can now be black, red, tawny, white, spotted 

 and speckled, and yet be quite pure and per- 

 fect blood — in short, improved berkshires 

 — leaving the old breed quite out of the ques- 

 tion — then I would say, that Benjamin Cooper, 

 of Camden, N. J., has about the best hogs in 

 this country, and they deserve the character 

 which J. G. has given them in page 382, vol. 

 4, of the Cabinet, the perusal of which ac- 

 count, induced me to go and view them for 

 myself. 



It is a pity the game is likely so soon to be 

 brought to a close, for I have half-a-dozen 

 young friends, who were just ready to dash 

 into the speculation, each prepared with his 

 Bement or Lossina;, and a pedigree as long 

 as my arm, and all of the right colour too, to 

 a hair; but Mr. Samuel D. Martin's letter, 

 in the Franklin Farmer, has, or I am much 

 mistaken, blown up the Berko-mania, and 

 will quite spoil the trade. He admits that 

 the genuine Berkshires were red, with black 

 spots — indeed, that is undeniable — but he con- 

 tends — which is as deniable — that they were 

 a coarse hog, with large ears and curly hair, 

 a great consumer, but that would attain a 

 large size (now, what on earth was there in 

 such a hog desirable to breed from]) and, 

 therefore, he would make it appear, that every 

 good quality of the present improved breed 

 was obtained from the Eastern or Chinese 

 hog, of which there were two varieties of 

 colours, the white and the black. Professor 

 Low, however, contends that the colour of 

 the modern Berkshire is still a reddish brown, 

 with dark spots; many of them, he says, are 

 nearly black, manifesting their near approach 

 to the Siamese character, and sometimes they 



are black, broken with white, but not a word 

 does he say of their being quite white ; al- 

 though he admits that from this intermixture 

 it becomes, in many cases, difficult to recog- 

 nise, in the present race, the characters of 

 the true Berkshire — and yet Mr. Martin has 

 a white imported boar, of tiie improved Berk- 

 shire breed, although he does not claim for 

 him that he is an original Berkshire, but that 

 he is an improvement upon that breed, by the 

 eastern crosses. But all this while Messrs. 

 Lossing and Wait attach great importance to 

 their pigs' coming direct from Berkshire, and 

 of being the only pure blood, although they 

 have never imported, by any chance, any of 

 the original red and black colour; and they 

 brand all those with contempt that are not 

 black and white, with the given number of 

 while feet and white hairs in the tail. 



But Mr. Martin says, although red and 

 black was the original, and has always been 

 the prevailing colour of the real Berkshire 

 hog, yet, thirty years ago there were white 

 i and black ones amongst them, (he must then 

 ! mean, I presume, amongst the original breed) 

 and that he considers it, therefore, perfectly 

 idle to say, that in an animal that is white 

 and black, a few hairs of the one or the other 

 colour, in this or that place, constitute a ge- 

 nuine or a counterfeit — and so say I — but 

 this is robbing the milk of all the cream, for, 

 as I have often seen, much more importance 

 has been attached to their colour, than to any 

 other qualification. 



So then, it appears that every one has been 

 breeding his own improved Berkshires ! And 

 that, in short, Berkshires are no longer Berk- 

 shires ! I shall, therefore, no longer expect 

 to see people shelling out their dollars for 

 very inferior pigs, merely because they have 

 been bred by such and such gentlemen, with- 

 out regard to much, besides the colour of the 

 feet and tail ! And it comes at last to this — 

 a good hog, any more than a good cow, can- 

 not be of a bad colour. 



Let it not, however, for a moment be sup- 

 posed that I wish to detract an iota from the 

 value of the Berkshires — they are most ex- 

 cellent as a cross with our own swine-stock, 

 and have done, and will do, infinite good; 

 but, really, the nonsense which is bandied 

 about in all sorts of ways, and all about things 

 of the most trifling importance, is perfectly 

 surfeiting, and reminds one of the old couplet, 



" Strange, that such difference there should be 

 'Twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee 1" 



John Dillon. 



New Jersey. 



The too great encouragement of manufac- 

 tures insensibly deprives the land of proper 

 culture, and consequently occasions the ruin 

 of agriculture. 



