THE DOMESTIC SWINE 387 



short head, broad forehead and nose, great fleshy ears, and 

 deeply furrowed skin. Not only is the face furrowed, but 

 thick folds of skin, which are harder than the other parts, 

 almost like the plates on the Indian rhinoceros, hang about 

 the shoulders and hindquarters/ The best Chinese breed, 

 small-bodied and short-eared, has been largely used to 

 improve the stock of European breeders. It is impossible 

 to attempt to particularise more of the different breeds, each 

 of which possesses some good point either in its size or 

 the quality of the meat. 



The Domestic Swine of the United Kingdom are chiefly 

 pen-reared animals that only in autumn are turned loose in 

 the woods to feast on acorns, walnuts, beech-mast, &c. ; 

 but in many countries they are at best half-tamed creatures 

 which are allowed to roam over vast expanses of wild country. 

 In many cases the animals escape and revert to a wild state, 

 and in course of time work no small havoc in cultivated 

 districts, often necessitating their extermination by settlers 

 and colonists. This was the case with the Bush Pigs of 

 South Africa, and the same thing has occurred in New 

 Zealand and other regions where domesticated animals 

 have been able to avoid the control of their owners. 



It is remarkable how the importance of Pig rearing varies 

 in different stock-raising countries. In the British Isles 

 there are, roughly, four million Pigs to thirty million sheep 

 and eleven million cattle. Australasia has but one million 

 Pigs to a hundred million sheep. The Argentine possesses 

 only about three-quarters of a million Swine to seventy-four 

 million sheep and twenty-one million cattle ; but in the 

 United States are forty million Pigs to about the same 

 number of sheep and cattle. Austria, Russia, and Germany 

 are also big Swine raisers, the two former possessing about 

 ten million each, while the last named has half as many again. 



These figures show the immense importance of Swine 

 in providing food for man. Pork is the most popular meat 

 in France and many countries in Europe. In Chicago 

 alone there are firms which each kill twenty-five thousand 

 hogs a day ; and in a single year the United States sends to 

 the United Kingdom alone, bacon and hams to the value of 



;l I,OOO,OOO. 



