.888 



Berkshire Pigs. 



[Jan., 



of Berkshire blood. It has also been claimed that the suit- 

 ability of Berkshire pigs for the manufacture of the class of 

 bacon most in demand was one of the chief causes of the 

 establishment of the large bacon factories which have existed 

 for so long a time in Wiltshire and the adjoining counties. It 

 is quite possible that the form and quality of the pigs of the 

 district may have had some considerable amount of influence 

 on the success of the bacon manufacturing industry, but it is 

 equally possible that the fine quality of the pork and the large 

 proportion of its lean to fat meat, due to the consumption by 

 the pigs of the extremely large quantity of dairy offals available, 

 may have had an almost equal amount of influence. At the 

 present time nearly all the best bacon produced in these islands 

 is from pigs kept in districts in w^hich dairying and cheese- 

 making are carried on to a large extent. The same remark 

 • applies to imported bacon, as the best of this is said to be pro- 

 duced in Denmark, Canada and Holland — in all these countries 

 the dairying interest is specially noticeable. 



This great popularity of the Berkshire pig appears to have 

 fed to its temporary undoing. It became fashionable amongst 

 those men who had amassed fortunes in the United States and 

 who in the seventies of the last century expended such large 

 gums in the purchase of shorthorn cattle of the Bates and the 

 Booth tribes. At the time named the breeding of pedigree 

 shorthorns v^as largely in the hands of men of m.eans and w^ith 

 somev^hat large establishments where home curing of bacon 



. was carried on and wdiere the Berkshire pig had become a 

 favourite owing to the high quality of the bacon produced from 



. rts carcass, particularly when the pigs had been fed on the dairy 

 offals which w^ere always more or less available in the large 

 country houses. What more natural for the breeder of short- 

 horns when trading v/ith an American to give a Berkshire pig 

 or even tw^o as a " luck penny " on having made a most profit- 

 able deal. Further, there is no denj'ing the fact that a well- 

 made Berkshire moves and looks the gentleman of the porcine 

 breeds. 



Unfortunately for the breed many of the imported Berkshires 

 became the property of Americans who possessed a larger 

 amount of money than of know^ledge of the practical points of a 

 pig. They were in fact mere fanciers who had taken up the 

 breeding and exhibition of stock as a hobby or with a view to 

 securing a certain amount of notice and popularity. The power 

 ; to possess something dissimilar to the possessions of other people 



