OF SELBOENE. 



231 



for his tusks to be broken off. No sooner had the beast 

 suffered this injury than his powers forsook him, and he 

 neglected those females to whom before he was passionately 

 attached, and from whom no fences could restrain him. 



LETTER XXXIII. 



TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 



HE natural term of a hog's life is little known, 

 and the reason is plain ; because it is neither 

 profitable nor convenient to keep that turbu- 

 lent animal to the full extent of its time ; 

 however, my neighbour, a man of substance, 

 who had no occasion to study every little advantage to a 

 nicety, kept a half-bred Bantam sow, who was as thick as 



HOG. 



she was long, and whose belly swept on the ground, till she 

 was advanced to her seventeenth year, at which period she 

 showed some tokens of age, by the decay of her teeth and 

 the decline of her fertility. 



