NA TURAL H1STOR Y OF SELBORNE. 207 



LETTER XXXIII. 



TO THE SAME. 



THE natural term of an hog's life is little known, and the reason 

 is plain because it is neither profitable nor convenient to keep 

 that turbulent animal to the full extent of its time : however, my 

 neighbour, a man of substance, who had no occasion to study 

 every little advantage to a nicety, kept an half-bred bantam-sow, 

 who was as thick as she was long, and whose belly swept on the 

 ground till she was advanced to her seventeenth year, at which 

 period she showed some tokens of age by the decay of her teeth 

 and the decline of her fertility. 



For about ten years this prolific mother produced two litters in 

 the year of about ten at a time, and once above twenty at a litter ; 

 but, as there were near double the number of pigs to that of teats 

 many died. From long experience in the world this female was 

 grown very sagacious and artful. When she found occasion to 

 converse with a boar she used to open all the intervening gates, 

 and march, by herself, up to a distant farm where one was kept ; 

 and when her purpose was served would return by the same means. 

 At the age of about fifteen her litters began to be reduced to four 

 or five ; and such a litter she exhibited when in her fatting-pen. 

 She proved, when fat, good bacon, juicy, and tender ; the rind, or 

 sward, was remarkably thin. At a moderate computation she was 

 allowed to have been the fruitful parent of three hundred pigs : a 

 prodigious instance of fecundity in so large a quadruped ! She 

 was killed in spring 1775. 



I am, &c. 



