THE DOMESTIC HOG. 405 



and leaves are their ordinary food. Linnaeus says, that the 

 bark of the fir-tree, dried, ground, steeped in warm water, and 

 then formed into thin cakes by baking, will fatten swine (a 

 hint worthy the attention of Highlanders), and he also states 

 that they eat the leaves of the bird cherry, hence, perhaps, the 

 origin of its Scotch name, hog-berry. In some parts of Here- 

 fordshire, according to Evelyn, large quantities of elm leaves 

 are gathered as food for swine and cattle. The author of British 

 Curiosities in Art and Nature (2nd edit. 17 C 28), says that in some 

 parts of Wiltshire swine are fed with knot-grass. They are 

 very fond of the earth-nut, the seeds of darnel, and the boiled 

 seeds of the snake-weed. The French use sun-flower seeds to 

 fatten them. Gilbert White mentions the singular fact, that 

 although milch sows often die from eating the fallen berries 

 of the yew-tree, yet barrow hogs and young sows eat them with 

 impunity. A careless observer would suppose Fraiizius to 

 be correct in saying " swine devour anything that cometh to 

 their mouth, and dish water is a very pleasant drink to them ;" 

 but Hasselgreri, whose remarks relate to the swine of Sweden, 

 says, that in that country they refuse at least one hundred and 

 seventy kinds of plants, and eat seventy-two. " When provoked 

 with hunger," says Barnaby Googe, " the pig will eat not 

 only her own offspring, but young children, which not long 

 since happened in Sussex, to the pitiful discomfort of the 

 parents." Such occurrences have indeed happened often - y and 

 old Chaucer notices this propensity, when he speaks of 



" The sow fretting the child right in the cradle, 

 The cook scalded for all her long ladle." 



No animals, perhaps, feed with such selfish eagerness as pigs 

 when several are collected round a trough, as seen in our 

 woodcut, which is exempt from the excellent criticism of the 

 countryman who, on being shown Gainsborough's celebrated 

 picture of swine at mess, observed, " To be sure they be very 

 fine pigs ; yet nobody ever saw three pigs feeding together, but 

 one o' um had a foot in the trough." 



The " filthiness" of the domestic hog, for which it is much 



