202 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



SWINE. 



£SSEX. 



From the Report of the Committee. 



We have no evidence that any attempt was made to improve 

 the breed of hogs in this country until after the war of the 

 Revolution. In the summer, the young pigs were generally 

 turned into the woods to graze, or later in the fall to feast upon 

 the products of the forest — great hogs from little acorns grew. 

 The winter pens were small, cold structures, with adjacent yards, 

 which have since been well described by Gen. Oliver as " stew 

 of stercoraceous stench — a Serbonian bog of fathomless filth 

 and miasmatic putrescence." 



Col. Timothy Pickering was the first Essex farmer, so far as 

 your Committee can learn, who systematically attempted to im- 

 prove our breed of hogs. Visiting his friend Col. Ridgeley, 

 near Philadelphia, he there saw some of the genuine Woburn 

 breed, descended from a pair which had been sent by the Duke 

 of Bedford, who had introduced them to President Washington, 

 and he obtained a pair for his farm at Wenham. They were 

 white, with more or less small black or red spots, round in the 

 carcase, small-limbed and headed, and for some years they were 

 in great demand. 



The superiority of these Woburn or Bedford hogs over the 

 black gaunt breed generally raised, prompted a general improve- 

 ment of the Essex County porkers, and some valuable crosses 

 were obtained by the ship captains who then sailed from Salem 

 and Newburyport to China and to Africa. Newbury is said to 

 have thus produced a local breed ; and we read in a Kennebunk 

 paper of February 17, 1819 : " Mr. David Nichols, a worthy 

 member of the Society of Friends, has this day killed a hog, 

 aged 21 months 13 days, half blooded, of the Newbury Whites^ 

 his girth six feet five inches, unusually short in proportion to 

 his size, weighing with the rough fat 670 pounds precisely, hav- 

 ing gained at least one pound per day since he was littered. He 

 was sold for twelve and half cents per pound." 



Byfield parish, in the town of Newbury, produced in due time 

 a breed of hogs which was regarded as the best in the country. 



