MAMMALIA—HOG. 297 
PE HOG 1 
Or all quadrupeds, the hog appears the most rough and unpolished. His 
voraciousness apparently depends on the continual necessity which he has 
to fill the vast capaciousness of his stomach. It is the roughness of the 
hair, the hardness of the skin, and the thickness of the fat, which render 
these animals so insensible to blows. Mice have been known to locge in 
their backs, and eat their fat and their skin, without their seeming seusible 
of it. Their other senses are good; and the huntsmen know that wild 
boars both see, hear, and smell, at a great distance; since, in order to sur- 
prise them, they wait in silence during the night, and place themselves 
under the wind, to prevent the boars perceiving their smell, of which they 
are sensible at a great distance, and which always immediately makes them 
change their road. 
Their imperfection in the sense of touch is still more augmented by a 
distemper which is called the measles, and which renders them almost abso- 
lutely insensible. This disorder proceeds in general from the coarseness of 
their food; for the wild boar, which usually lives on corn, fruits, acorns, and 
roots, is not subject to this distemper, any more than the young pig whilst 
it sucks. This is only to be.prevented by keeping the domestic hog in 
a clean stable, and giving him plenty of wholesome food; by this means 
his flesh will become excellent to the taste, and the lard firm and brittle, 
especially, if he be kept for a fortnight or three weeks before he is killed, 
in a clean stable, without litter, giving him no other food than dry corn; 
for this purpose we should choose a swine of about a year old, full of flesh 
and fat. 
Voracious and uncleanly as he is, the hog has some good qualities. If 
one of his own kind utters a ery of distress, every hog within hearing in- 
stantly hurries to his assistance. When teased by a dog, they have been 
known to hem him round, and kill him. Ifa male and female are brought 
up together when young, and the latter loses her companion, she begins 
immediately to decline, and prebably dies of a broken heart. 
Nor is the hog wholly useless while living. In Minorca, he is frequently 
yoked to the plough in conjunction with an ass, and he performs his task 
in a workmanlike manner. In some parts of Italy and F:ance, swine are 
used to discover truffles, which grow a few inches under the surface of the 
soil. A cord is tied round the animal’s hind leg, he is conveyed to the field, 
and wherever he stops to root with his nose, there the truffle is invariably 
1 Sus scrofa, Lis. The genus Sus has four or six upper and six lower incisors; two 
_ upper and two lower canines; fourteen upper and fourteen lower molars. Canines bent 
upwards and laterally; molars tuberculous; lower incisors hent forward ; four toes en all 
the feet, he wo middie ones only touching the ground, armed with strong hoofs; noss 
elongated, cartilatinous ; body covered with bristles ; twelve teats. 
38 
