98 Domestic ANIMALS. 
“The hog was justly classed by the Jews among the vilest 
animals in the scale of animated nature; and it can not be 
doubted that his keeper shared in the contempt and abhorrence 
which he had excited. The prodigal son in the parable had 
spent his all in riotous living, and was ready to perish 
through want, before he submitted to the humiliating employ- 
ment of feeding swine.” 
“Swine,” Heroditus says, “are accounted such impure beasts 
by the Egyptians, that if a man touches one even by accident, 
he presently hastens to the river and, in all his clothes, plunges 
into the water. For this reason swine-herds alone of the 
Egyptians are not auowed to enter any of their temples; neither 
will any one give his daughter in marriage to one of that pro- 
fession, nor take a wife born of such parents, so that they are 
necessitated to intermarry among themselves.” 
The Brahminical tribes of India share with the Jews, Moham- 
medans, and Egyptians this aversion to the hog. The modern 
Copts, descendants of the ancient Egyptians, gear no swine, and 
the Jews of the present day abstain from their flesh as of old. 
It was Cuvier’s opinion that “in hot climates the flesh of 
swine is not good;” and Mr. Sonnini remarks that “in Egypt, 
Syria, and even the southern parts of Greece, this meat, though 
very white and delicate, is so far from being firm, and is so 
overcharged with fat, that it disagrees with the strongest 
stomachs. It is therefore considered unwholesome, and this 
will account for its proscription by the legislators and priests 
of the East. Such abstinence was doubtless indispensable to 
health under the burning suns of Arabia and Egypt.” How 
is it under the burning suns of Carolina and Georgia? 
III.—BREEDS. 
The various breeds which have been reared by crosses be- 
tween those procured from different countries are so numerous, 
that to give anything like a detailed description of them would 
fill alarge volume. We shall refer to only a few of the more 
important of them. i 
