708 
licporl on iJie Pigs Exliihited at Windgoi^ 
PIGS. 
One of the salient features of the past half-century, and espe- 
cially of its later decades, has been the increasing agricultural 
importance of the pig. When the Society started, and for 
many years afterwards, this unattractive but useful animal 
appears to have been regarded rather as a necessary evil. It was 
not, indeed, until British agriculture had fallen upon the day of 
small things that the position of the pig as a possible source of 
proflt became fully recognised, and that it rose from the status 
of the farm scavenger to the dignity of recognition as a money- 
maker. 
It was not, however, that the pig was overlooked at the time 
of the great agricultural revolution, at the end of the last and the 
beginning of the present century. The pioneers of improved 
farming could scarcely fail to be dissatisfied with their swine, and 
they seem for the most part to have despaired of getting better 
pigs by the methods which proved so efScacious in the case of 
cattle and sheep. In the latter instances they remodelled their 
stock from their own resources, so to speak, and without any out- 
side aid. But to improve their pigs they went abroad, and by 
the importation of Siamese, Chinese, Maltese, and Neapolitan 
breeds they improved many of the aboriginal varieties off the face 
of the earth. Professor Low, writing soon after the foundation of 
the Society, speaks of the Northampton, Shropshire, Hampshire, 
and Rudgwickas " former breeds " which had disappeared before 
the march of improvement. Of course, the best of the old 
varieties survived, though they most of them borrowed some 
good qualities from their foreign rivals. Fifty years ago the 
chief breeds existing were the "Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and 
Norfolk " breed — now known generically as the " Large White " 
— the Suffolk, the Essex, and the Berkshire. Other breeds — such 
as the Tamworths, for instance — existed locally, but were, gene- 
rally speaking, unknown, at any rate to the agricultural writers 
of that day. Among the " extra stock " at the first Show of the 
Society,in 1839, was a boar exhibited by the Rev. W. L. Rham, 
which was described as of " the Suffolk, Chinese, and Neapolitan 
cross." The prize in one of the classes was won by three pigs 
of a " Chinese and Oxfordshire " cross, shown by Mr. Smallbones, 
of Hordley. 
The position occupied by the pig section in the catalogue of 
the first Oxford Show is indicative of the agricultural opinion 
of its importance at that time. Four prizes (35Z. in all) were 
awarded, and one of these, as above mentioned, went to a cross- 
bred animal. Four years afterwards the large and small breeds 
