IRELAND BREEDING. 203 



BRITISH VARIETIES. 



For our VARIETIES of pigs at large, I repeat my 

 reference to Lawrence's General Treatise on Cat- 

 tle, the only book, probably, in which they have 

 ever been enumerated and described, the author 

 himself having been a considerable breeder and 

 feeder. It will be sufficient to advert to the most 

 material, and most noted, which are the BERKS, 

 HANTS, HEREFORD, SHROPSHIRE, YORKSHIRE, and 

 MIDLAND county, for large size as bacon hogs ; and 

 the Oxford, Bucks, Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, 

 as smaller breeds for pork- feeding. All the above 

 breeds are more or less imbued with foreign blood, 

 the larger breed chiefly through the medium of the 

 Berkshire cross, that county originally taking the 

 lead in the foreign improvement. Berkshire and 

 Hereford boars and sows have been used, within the 

 last twenty or thirty years, in the improvement of 

 the Irish breed of hogs, a coarse, hairy, and leggy 

 variety, at length successfully improved into a form 

 so nearly resembling that of our English stock, as 

 to be with difficulty distinguished. Of those, both 

 dead and alive, Ireland has exported immense quan- 

 tities to this country. In the spring, 1830, according 

 to the public papers, an Irish drove, amounting to 

 upwards of fourteen thousand, passed a turnpike in 

 the west. 



During majiy years past, indeed, PIG-BREEDING 

 had greatly declined among us, and we had been 

 supplied in proportion, not only with bacon and pork, 



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