CHAPTER XXII 

 THE AMERICAN OR LARD-TYPE HOG 



The United States has created comparatively few of the breeds 

 now found within her borders. By the time this country reached that 

 stage in her live-stock development when improvement in domestic 

 animals became imperative, European nations had met and solved a 

 similar problem by the creation of numerous useful breeds. It was 

 but natural, therefore, that many of these foreign breeds were imported 

 to this country, and it was fortunate indeed that most of them proved 

 fully capable of fulfilling the requirements of our stock growers. We 

 were thus afforded an easy short cut across what would have been a 

 long, laborious period in the development of our live-stock industry. 

 We borrowed whenever such procedure was practicable, and the fact 

 that we have never found it really necessary to create a breed of draft 

 or carriage horses, beef, dairy, or dual-purpose cattle, mutton sheep, 

 or bacon hogs shows how great is our indebtedness to the breeders of 

 Europe. 



Our needs were not entirely met, however, for we have created a 

 breed of trotting horses, a breed of saddle horses, a breed of jacks, a 

 breed of fine-wool sheep, and a number of breeds of lard-type swine. 

 We have also found it necessary to modify slightly some of the breeds 

 we have adopted, and to our credit it may be said that we have made 

 certain changes in some of these adopted breeds which, as viewed from 

 the standpoint of American conditions and requirements, represent 

 decided improvements. The Polled Shorthorn, the Polled Hereford, 

 the "American type" Hereford, and the "American type" Berkshire 

 are examples of such modifications. 



The extended patronage which we have given to foreign stock and 

 the lack of necessity for developing breeds of our own, while highly 

 advantageous, has tended to dim our own glory as a live-stock breeding 

 nation. If, because of this fact, our live-stock industry needs a re- 

 deeming feature, it is furnished by the creation of a distinctly American 

 type of hog, which includes several breeds. European breeds of swine 

 proved so fully incompetent to make pork under American conditions 

 that our breeders found it necessary to create distinctly new breeds of 

 a new type, and this work has been so well done as to give us a clear 

 title to the distinction of leading the world in swine breeding and in 

 pork production. 



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