102 NATURAL HISTORY. 



article of the first importance to a naval and commercial 

 nation, for it takes salt better than any other kind, and 

 consequently is capable of being preserved longer. The 

 lard is of great use in medicine, being an ingredient in 

 various sorts of plaisters, either pure, or in the form of 

 pomatum; and the bristles are formed into brushes of 

 various kinds. 



' This animal has been applied to an use in this island, 

 which seems peculiar to Minorca and the part of Murray 

 which lies between the Spey and Elgin. It has been 

 there converted into a beast of draught ; for I have been 

 assured by a minister of that county, eye-witness to the 

 fact, that he had on his first coming into his parish seen 

 a cow, a sow, and two Trogues (young horses) yoked 

 together, and drawing a plough in a light sandy soil ; and 

 that the sow was the best drawer of the four. In Minorca, 

 the ass and the hog are common helpmates, and are 

 yoked together in order to turn up the land. 



1 The wild boar was formerly a native of our country, 

 as appears from the laws of Hoel Dda, who permitted 

 his grand-huntsman to chase that animal from the middle 

 of November to the beginning of December. William the 

 Conqueror punished, with the loss of their eyes, any that 

 were convicted of killing the wild boar, the stag, or the 

 roebuck; and Fitz-Stephen tells us that the vast forest 

 that in his time grew on the north side of London, was 

 the retreat of stags, fallow deer, wild boars, and bulls. 

 Charles I. turned out wild boars in the New Forest, 

 Hampshire, but they were destroyed in the civil wars.' 



The publication of the ' British Zoology ' was interrupted 

 in 1765, by a tour which Pennant made on the Continent. 



