414 THE HOG. 



leprosy, while the people of the same countries who now feed 

 upon it, are comparatively exempt from that terrible malady. 



All the older nations of Europe made large use of the flesh 

 of the Hog. The Greeks fed much upon it, as innumerable 

 references in their writings testify. To the Romans it afford- 

 ed a large part of the food of the people. So much attention 

 did the Romans pay to the rearing of the Hog, that their 

 writers describe it as a branch of rural economy, under the 

 term porculatio. They carried their fondness for this species 

 of food to excess in their modes of preparing it for use ; and 

 numerous ordinances of the censors were passed against the 

 supposed abuse. These rigid monitors prohibited the use of 

 certain parts of the animal at festivals and repasts, as the 

 mammae, the glands, the muzzle ; but no laws could check 

 the brutal gluttony of the Roman people. To produce a dis- 

 eased state of the liver, they fed the animal on dried figs, 

 and then killed him by repletion with honeyed wine.* It 

 was their custom to torture the animal to death, that a higher 

 flavour might be given to his flesh. In the days of the Em- 

 perors, the dish called Porcus Trojanus became so extrava- 

 gant with relation to expense, that sumptuary laws were 

 passed to restrain the cost. This dish consisted of a Hog- 

 roasted whole, stuffed with animals of all kinds, beccaficoes, 

 thrushes, larks, nightingales, oysters, bathed with the rich- 

 est wines and gravies. The laws sought to restrain the ex- 

 cess of expense, but they could not cure the corruption of 

 manners, which called for brutal banquets without regard to 

 animal suffering. . 



The Hog, in the state of domestication, has spread over 

 nearly all the world without the polar circles. He was not, 

 however, indigenous to America, though he was carried 

 thither by the earliest voyagers, and has now multiplied 

 throughout the continent, wherever the descendants of Euro- 



* Plinii Historia Naturalis, Lib. viii. 



