HOGS BACON. 247 



For a hog to make good bacon, we should certainly not go, for instance, to 

 Boston for the breed of Amos Wood's sow, that weighed alive in 1819 only 1106 

 pounds, having gained 510 pounds in 365 days. Yet Agricultural Societies con- 

 tinue to offer premiums for large hogs, as if they expected thereby to develop 

 some new principle in swine-ology. For those who go for weight, it may be 

 proper to add that Mr. Wood gave his sow a salt fish, and the water in which 

 it was boiled, once a week. Buffo?i mentions a hog killed in England which 

 weighed 853 pounds ; Sotmini, his commentator, another, killed in France, 

 which weighed 990 ; and Mr. Jefferson, in his notes, mentions one killed in 

 Virginia that reached the enormous weight of 1200 pounds. 



But, on reflection, we must defer to a more convenient season our observa- 

 tions on the breed and management of hogs, as it would, of itself, make a pa- 

 per for all the space we can spare. Moreover, it is now too late to give ad- 

 vice as to breeds ; for the time is nearly at habd for the farmer to kill such 

 as he has; and for those who put up their own meat to buy the best they can 

 get. Our own impression is, however, that among the best breeds ever im- 

 ported for the region of good bacon, before described, were the hogs sent to 

 this country by a Mr. Wright, an English farmer, to Mr. Skinner, then Editor 

 of the American Farmer. They were a long, well proportioned, neatly formed, 

 black hog — if anything, rather large. They got into great repute in Virginia, 

 and were there called the "Skinner breed," in the neighborhood of Ptichmond, 

 on the James River. Mr. George Patterson, of Springfield, is said to have im- 

 proved them — it may be after some degeneracy from the original stock — by a ju- 

 dicious cross. He has at present a large number of most beautiful, symmetrical 

 little Berkshires — alike, some two or three dozen of them, in shape and size, as 

 so many peas from the same pod ; and would make a most attractive pen, and 

 carry off premiums at a cattle-show, with those who go for fat, pretty things ; 

 but he condemns them as being too small, weak on the loin, and bad breeders. 

 They have fallen into general disfavor in the South. But of all hogs that have 

 come within our knowledge, from abroad, none have been altogether equal, in 

 all points, to the famous ^'Parkinson hog," which was landed in Alexandria in 

 1800, and which, it is said, were sent a present to General Washington, but were, 

 it is said, by Parkinson taken to himself by a 7nisappropriation ! They were re- 

 m3irks.h[Y square-built hogs, with broad backs, round bodies, rather small legs of 

 middling length ; built up in the body on the model of the Bakewell sheep ; black 

 and white spotted, with a slight predominance of white, and of middling size ; nei- 

 ther too short-legged nor too fat to travel in search of the natural food, without 

 which no good bacon can be had. If any one yet has this breed in anything like 

 its original excellence, we sliould like to know who; but of this we have little 

 hope, since that most observant and sagacious grazier we have ever known, the 

 late William Steenbergen, of the valley of Virginia, told us twenty-six years ago, 

 and twenty years after the importation, that he considered them the most perfect 

 animals he had ever seen ; and that their first cross on our native hogs was 

 equally perfect ; but that, after breeding in and in, they degenerated into a char- 

 acter vastly inferior to either of the original kinds. If any man's agricultural 

 sayings deserved to take the force of axioms, his did.* 



* Since writing ibe above, we have aeon a bog very nearly resembling the old Parkinson, in the sty of 

 Mr. Lewis Morris, near Fordham, in Westchester Co. IJig ^^s wero farrowed in March, and he expects 

 them to net 17r> po.iuds at Christmas. 'ITiey are fed on corn, and Kard corn at that— the Yellow Dutton. 



[Ed. Farm. lib. 



(535) 



