046 V ERTEBRATA. 



It i- a fact in curioua contrasl bo our times, thai Moses interdicted the eating of swine's flesh, 



\f H liom t, who was a servile and by no means discriminating imitator, followed bis example- 



. wa, however, understood the flavor of pork, and frequently indulged in tasting it, 



: the most bitter denunciations of the prophets are leveled against this transgression, 



|i ■ -. was ven common. In the time of our Saviour hogs were familiar objects, 



is wo are told in one conspicuous instance, a drove of them were given up to devils and ran 



;l . in our day, the hog contributes almost as largely as any other animal to the feeding 



ts flesh is the most nutrition-; of animal food, pound for pound; it is easily kept 



fattened. Its utility to the poor especially is forcibly put by an English writer in the 



■• rma : 



r and his family, who Tint a quarther' of a cellar or a garret in some squalid 



the British metropolis, often have a pig in their fraction of an apartment, which eats of the 



- on the same Straw, and is in fact, to all intents and purposes, a member of 



iiuilv, not merely tolerated, but loved and loving; for though hogs are sullen and stubborn 



when one attempts to lead them captive, and require to be pulled backward in orderthat 



nay be impelled forward, yet they are susceptible to kindly treatment, and a hog may not 



taught to follow i; ■ master, but there have been instances of training them to point at 



>gs, and there is nol a country fair in England where the powers of 'Toby the wise 



in the mysteries of divination, are not the marvel of the rustics. 



••!■ •, however, for the purpose of playing the pointer, or astonishing the natives with the 



wisdom of Tobias, that the pig is kept with so much care in the cantonment of the cellar or the 



; - : - a tale of the greal and paramount value of the pig to the poor man, and a tale 



land — a tale of most monstrous and most heart-rending injustice on the part of somebody— 



but with the latt< r we have no concern. The tale of the pig is, that without it the poor man in 



ind could not keep the tenancy of the mud cottage reared by his own hands on the margin 



• health-invading bog, that the pig finds the annual impost which the man must pay for 



g in that Btate of 'glorious independence,' in which no wind can blow upon him with a more 



bitter blast, and no contingency of events can despoil him of a single comfort. 



•• V w, if the hog is thus, as the case of millions has proved, a sheet-anchor by which man can 



ride out the- topmost bent of misery's tempest, how well may it serve those who can have it all to 



This of itself gives a popular interest to the animal far above that which is possessed 



■ veriest marvel in mere natural history. Nay, there is more depth of pathos and force of 



and social instruction in a single hog, circumstanced as we have mentioned, than in all the 



formal zoological collections on the face of the earth."* 



antry the hog is not thus a matter of stem necessity, but it is still difficult to con- 

 e how the southern and .southwestern plantations, the laborers of which are largely fed on 

 lid 1 sustained without this animal. What would the epicure do without hams— 

 Westphalian, Virginia, Sugar-cured — and what are quite as good, the hams salted and packed in 

 1 old homespun way by the farmers of New England I What would the country tavern 

 ■I that long lent of summer which besets it, during which fresh beef and mutton and veal arc 

 • larder, without that universal stand-by, fried ham and effffs? What would become 

 were to adopt the law of Moses and eschew hogs' lard — that magic spell of the 

 chen, which imparts Buch a relish to fish, flesh, and fowl ? A celebrated French cook has au- 

 thoritatively pronounced the hog to be the "Prince of the Kitchen? and philosophers of note tell us 

 animal was the very first that man domesticated and killed for his use. A keen satirist, 

 PSed in human nature, in a fable upon the origin of cruelty, represents man in a 

 innocence, and with hands all unstained by the blood of a single living creature, 



ring the wild w b, contending with monkeys and macaws for "fruits in their seasons," and 



the wild bogs for fern and other roots, when no fruit was to be found. Whether the rival- 



• s hip ■ med any jealousy of the hog, and beech-mast had any influence in making man more 



and carnivorous, is not -aid. though it is not impossible, and would add to the truth of the 



* British Cyclopedia of Natural History. 



