646 
VERTEBEATA. 
It is a fact in curious contrast to our times, that Moses interdicted the eating of swine's flesh, 
and Mahomet, who was a servile and by no means discriminating imitator, followed his example- 
The ancient Jews, however, understood the flavor of pork, and frequently indulged in tasting it, 
for many of the most bitter denunciations of the prophets are leveled against this transgression, 
which, it is evident, was very common. In the time of our Saviour hogs were familiar objects, 
though, as we are told in one conspicuous instance, a drove of them were given up to devils and ran 
into the sea. In our day, the hog contributes almost as largely as any other animal to the feeding 
of mankind ; its flesh is the most nutritious of animal food, pound for pound ; it is easily kept 
and easily fattened. Its utility to the poor especially is forcibly put by an English writer in the 
following terms: 
"An Irish laborer and his family, who 'rint a quarther' of a cellar or a garret in some squalid 
den in the British metropolis, often have a pig in their fraction of an apartment, which eats of the 
same potatoes, reposes on the same straw, and is in fact, to all intents and purposes, a member of 
the family, not merely tolerated, but loved and loving; for though hogs are sullen and stubborn 
animals when one attempts to lead them captive, and require to be pulled backward in order that 
they may be impelled forward, yet they are susceptible to kindly treatment, and a hog may not 
only be taught to follow its naaster, but there have been instances of training them to point at 
game like dogs, and there is not a country fair in England where the powers of 'Toby the wise 
pig,' in the mysteries of divination, are not the marvel of the rustics. 
"It is not, however, for the purpose of playing the pointer, or astonishing the natives with the 
wisdom of Tobias, that the pig is kept with so much care in the cantonment of the cellar or the 
garret. It tells a tale of the great and paramount value of the pig to the poor man, and a tale 
of Ireland — a tale of most monstrous and most heart-rending injustice on the part of somebody — 
but with the latter we have no concern. The tale of the pig is, that without it the poor man in 
Ireland could not keep the tenancy of the mud cottage reared by his own hands on the margin 
of the health-invading hog, that the pig finds the annual impost which the man must pay for 
being in that state of 'glorious independence,' in which no wind can blow upon him with a more 
bitter blast, and no contingency of events can despoil him of a single comfort. 
"Now, if the hog is thus, as the case of millions has proved, a sheet-anchor by which man can 
ride out the topmost bent of misery's tempest, how well may it serve those who can have it all to 
themselves ! This of itself gives a popular interest to the animal far above that which is possessed 
by the veriest marvel in mere natural history. Nay, there is more depth of pathos and force of 
moral and social instruction in a single hog, circumstanced as we have mentioned, than in all the 
formal zoological collections on the face of the earth."* 
In our country the hog is not thus a matter of stern necessity, but it is still difficult to con- 
ceive how the southern and southwestern plantations, the laborers of which are largely fed on 
bacon, could be sustained without this animal. What would the epicure do without hams — 
WestjyhaUan, Virginia, Sugar-cured — and what are quite as good, the hams salted and packed in 
the good old homespun way by the farmers of New England ? What would the covmtry tavern 
do, n\ that long lent of summer which besets it, during which fresh beef and mutton and veal are 
unknown to the larder, v/ithout that universal stand-by, fried ham and eggs? What would become 
of us all if we were to adopt the law of Moses and eschew hogs' lard — that magic spell of the 
kitchen, which imparts such a relish to fish, flesh, and fowl ? A celebrated French cook has au- 
thoritatively pronounced the hog to be the '■'■Prince of the Kitchen^'^ and philosophers of note tell us 
that this animal was the very first that man domesticated and killed for his use, A keen satirist, 
profoundly versed in human nature, in a fable upon the origin of cruelty, represents man in a 
state of perfect innocence, and with hands all unstained by the blood of a single living creature, 
ranging the wild woods, contending with monkeys and macaws for "fruits in their seasons," and 
with the wild hogs for fern and other roots, when no fruit was to be found. Whether the rival- 
ship occasioned any jealousy of the hog, and beech-mast had any influence in making man more 
cruel and carnivorous, is not said, though it is not impossible, and would add to the truth of the 
* British Cyclopedia of Natural History. 
