THE HAMPSHIRE 751 



Hampshire is in extreme south England and is not one of the 

 Midland counties. No evidence whatever can be deduced from 

 Low's writings even to suggest the existence of a belted breed in 

 Hampshire, notwithstanding published statements to the contrary. 

 Sidney, in 1871, stated ^ that the original Essex pig was a parti- 

 colored animal, black with white shoulders, nose, and legs — in 

 fact, a sort of sheeted pig, large, upright, and coarse in bone. 

 Later, in 1898, Spencer also writes^: 



There existed in Essex and a part of Cambridgeshire a variety of pigs 

 curiously marked, being, as it was commonly called, sheeted or saddle-backed, 

 the actual color being a black with a streak of white which extended from be- 

 hind the shoulders to about the hips. . . . One may occasionally see a few 

 specimens of the sheeted pig in Essex, but these are simply the outcroppings 

 of the old breed, as they have ceased to be bred to those points which were at 

 one time considered to be distinctive of the sort. 



The introduction of the Hampshire pig to America seems of 

 questionable date. The claim has been made that Captain John 

 Mackay, who commanded a packet ship plying between Boston 

 and Liverpool, brought some belted swine to America between 

 1820 and 1825 to a farm which he owned near Boston. While 

 there are numerous references in early American agricultural 

 periodicals to the Mackay hog, the writer is unable to secure any 

 description that refers to the Mackay as a belted hog ; in fact, the 

 references give it as a white breed which sometimes is marked with 

 a few black or sandy spots. In 1842, in an almanac published by 

 the Western Farmer and Gardener at Cincinnati, is an illustrated 

 chapter on hogs, in which the different prominent breeds are dis- 

 cussed. In this we find a picture of the Thin Rind, or Rhinoceros, 

 breed, with an account of its characteristics and probable ancestry, 

 as set forth by the editor of the Kentucky Farmer, who was a 

 breeder of these hogs. Herein he states that their color is not fixed, 

 and that he has seen them jet black and pure white, but that they 

 are commonly hsted (sheeted or belted) and never spotted. In this 

 article the writer says : " They were imported some years ago, as I 

 understand, fromTonquin in China, by a merchant of New Orleans, 

 and then brought to Kentucky by Captain John A. Holton of 



1 Samuel Sidney, The Pig, p. 29. London, 1871. 



2 Sanders Spencer, Pigs : Breeds and Management. 



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