142 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS 



animal, and also to the fact that It is omnivorous, the creature 

 has ever been a favorite with the cotter class. Those folk, 

 who can afford neither sheep nor horned cattle, can often pro- 

 vide the food for pigs, and thus, in turn, be much better fed 

 than they would otherwise be. 



It is only within two centuries that our pigs have attained 

 to anything like the domestication in which we commonly find 

 them. Of old they were allowed to range the forests, much 

 as they do in certain parts of our Southern States at the 

 present day. In some parts of Europe, particularly in the 

 southern portion of the continent, this method of rearing and 

 feeding is still common. It was and is advantageous, for the 

 reason that the creature, by its remarkably keen sense of 

 smelling and its singular capacity for overturning the ground, 

 is able to provide itself with abundant food in the way of 

 grubs and roots which are not at the disposition of any other 

 animal. It was only as the public forests disappeared that 

 pigs came to receive any considerable part of their provender 

 from the products of tilled fields. In this stage of our agricul- 

 ture, when all the land was possessed, the life of the pig was 

 necessarily more restricted, and he became the denizen of a 

 pen. In the earlier state there was no cost for his keeping; 

 in the latter, except so far as he could be fed from the waste 

 of a household, he is an expensive animal. 



It is with this last state of the pig, when he became the 

 most housed of our domesticated animals, that the work of the 

 breeder really began. The aim of those who have developed 

 the pig has been, as we have said, to obtain the most rapid 

 growth along with the greatest weight of fat, and to accom- 

 plish the results with the least expenditure in the way of food. 

 Although the animal has been subjected to selective experi- 



