THE WILD HOG. 401 



little Hogs do not breed with the common race, and they had 

 not been domesticated by the native inhabitants. They are 

 far inferior in economical uses to the Swine of Europe, which 

 were introduced by the Spaniards, have multiplied wherever 

 the European settler has formed his home, and have even 

 found their way into the woods, and increased in the state of 

 liberty. 



Of all the species of the Hog, the most important, with re- 

 lation to his uses, is the Wild Hog, commonly so called. 

 This creature, in almost every country which he inhabits, 

 seems to have been captured and enslaved. But we are not 

 entitled to say that all the domesticated races of the world 

 have the same descent. We are yet too imperfectly ac- 

 quainted with the subdued races of the interior of Africa to 

 be able to maintain that they are all descended from the 

 Wild Hog ; and in the countries of the Indian Archipelago 

 and the South Seas, it may be that other species, endowed 

 likewise with the faculty of resigning their natural wildness, 

 and changing their characters under the influence of domes- 

 tication, have been reduced to slavery. Nay, the Wild Hog, 

 so called, varies so much in characters as he is an inhabitant 

 of Western Asia and Europe, of Eastern Asia, or of the 

 equinoctial parts of Africa, that naturalists have apparently 

 as much reason for regarding these races as distinct species, 

 as many other animals which are held to be so. 



The Wild Hog is the inhabitant of the temperate and 

 warmer parts of Asia, Europe, and a great part of Africa. 

 His colour varies with age and climate, but in our latitudes 

 it is usually a dusky brown, with black spots and streaks. 

 His skin is covered with coarse hairs or bristles, but with a 

 soft wool intermixed, and with coarser and longer bristles 

 upon the neck and spine, which he erects when in anger. He 

 is a very bold and powerful creature, and becomes more fierce 

 and indocile with age. He feeds on herbs, and delights in 

 roots, which his nice sense of smell and touch enables him to 



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