BOOK VII. X. 5-8 



warm water, as men are allowed to do in similar 

 circumstances. 



While thirst in the summer is pernicious to all 6 

 quadrupeds, it is specially hurtful to pigs. We, 

 therefore, advise that they should not be taken to 

 water twice a day, like goats and sheep, but that, if 

 possible, they should be kept in the neighbourhood 

 of a river or pool at the time of the rising of the 

 Dogstar ; for, when a pig is feeling the intense heat, 

 it is not content with drinking the water, if it cannot 

 also plunge into it and so cool its fat maw and its 

 belly distended with fodder, and there is nothing in 

 which it takes so much pleasure as wallowing in 

 streams and muddy lakes. But if the nature of the 

 district makes this impossible, drinking water should 7 

 be drawn from wells and poured into troughs in 

 generous supply; for, unless they are abundantly 

 satisfied, their lungs become affected. This disease 

 is best treated by inserting lungwort into the ears, a 

 small root of which we have already more than once 

 spoken about and in detail. Pain from a diseased spleen 8 

 also often attacks them ; this happens when a serious 

 drought occurs and when, as the Bucolic poem says,* 



Fruits lie on all sides, each strewn 'neath its tree. 



For pigs, being insatiable animals, make for sweet- 

 ness in their food beyond measure and suffer 

 exceedingly in the summer from swelling of the 

 spleen. This can be relieved if troughs made of 

 tamarisk wood and butcher's broom are constructed 

 and filled with water and put in their way when 

 they are thirsty; for the juice of the wood has a 



« VergU, Eel VII. 54. 



3<^3 



