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 it's 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 con- 

 verse 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. 



