212 WILD TRAITS IN TAME ANIMALS. 



crossed with the Chinese. These are of a 

 different race altogether, and are not found wild 

 anywhere at the present day. The careful Mon- 

 golians have kept and improved them for untold 

 centuries, and this doubtless accounts for their 

 superiority from the farmer's point of view. 

 Nearly all our breeds of domestic swine — such 

 as the Sussex, the Berkshire, and the white 

 Yorkshire varieties — show distinct signs — both 

 outward and inward — of Celestial descent. Until 

 comparatively lately the Irish pig — whether from 

 a sense of patriotism or under coercion I cannot 

 say — maintained his national independence. He 

 was a creature in shape somewhat resembling a 

 tailless and scaleless crocodile which had been 

 pinched sideways and mounted on stilts. His 

 snout was of enormous length, his back was con- 

 vex from end to end, not with a soft, blubber-like 

 layer of fat, but with corrugated bony promin- 

 ences arranged like the stones of an arch. He 

 was probably — like his masters — the direct de- 

 scendant of certain pristine monarchs of the soil 

 who owed neither blood nor allegiance to any 

 foreign nation (whether Saxon or Chinese) to the 

 east of St George's Channel. His modern rep- 

 resentatives have, however, conformed to the 



