194 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
Thus far it is plain that the deprivation of masculine vigour 
puts a stop to the growth of those parts or appendages that are 
looked upon as its insignia. But the ingenious Mr. Lisle^ in l^is 
book on husbandry, carries it much further ; for he says that the 
loss of those insignia alone has sometimes a strange effect on the 
ability itself : he had a boar so fierce and venereous, that, to pre- 
vent mischief, orders were given for his tusks to be broken off. 
No sooner had the beast suffered this injury than his powers 
forsook him, and he neglected those females to whom before he 
was passionately attached, and from whom no fences could 
restrain him. 
LETTER XXXIII. To the Hon. DAINES BARRINGTON 
The natural term of a hog's life is little known, and the reason 
is plain — because it is neither profitable nor convenient to keep 
that turbulent animal to the full extent of its time : however, my 
neighbour, a man of substance, who had no occasion to study 
every little advantage to a nicety, kept a half bred Bantam-sow, 
who was as thick as she was long, and whose belly swept on the 
ground, till she was advanced to her seventeenth year ; at which 
period she showed some tokens of age by the decay of her teeth 
and the decline of her fertiUty. 
For about ten years this prolific mother produced two litters 
in the year of about ten at a time, and once above twenty at a 
litter ; but, as there were near double the number of pigs to that 
of teats, many died. From long experience in the world this 
female was grown very sagacious and artful ; when she found 
occasion to converse with a boar she used to open all the inter- 
vening gates, and march, by herself, up to a distant farm where 
one was kept ; and when her purpose was served would return 
by the same means. At the age of about fifteen her litters began 
to be reduced to four or five ; and such a litter she exhibited 
when in her fatting-pen. She proved, when fat, good bacon, 
juicy, and tender ; the rind, or sward, was remarkably thin. At 
a moderate computation she was allowed to have been the fruit- 
ful parent of three hundred pigs : a prodigious instance of fe- 
cundity in so large a quadruped 1 She was killed in spring 1775. 
I am, &c. 
