EXTREME PRECOCITY IN PIGS. 
85 
robbing nests, eating the eggs, and murdering the young, and the 
parents also when it could catch them. This one-sided fight 
ended in the practical extermination of the birds, and with their 
extirpation arose a fresh evil, which exists acutely in the island 
to this day. The far-famed Jamaica “tick ’’had, in ante-mon- 
goose days, been kept in subjection by the birds of the air, and 
plagued not man nor beast. But with the disappearance of the 
birds the pernicious tick grew fat and multiplied until it became 
a power in the land, where it still holds the field. Start a 
Jamaica islander on the subject of ticks, and listen to his feeling 
talk ! Some faint idea will thereby be gained of the command- 
ing position which the villainous pest has won. It is now every- 
where and the traveller need not waste time trying to avoid its 
attentions. It will have him, and he must be very thankful if it 
does not have him in more than three score and ten places at one 
time. Cattle have been known to refuse to enter fields on 
account of the all-pervading tick. Of late years attempts have 
been made to quelch the mongoose, but the agile and wary 
animal objects and survives together with the tick.’ ” 
EXTREME PRECOCITY IN PIGS. 
N December 17 last, I was in a labourer’s cottage where 
in a box on a chair near the fire were two pigs born 
that same day, between 3 and 4 a.m. They belonged 
to a litter of sixteen and had been given to the woman 
of the cottage, who was bringing them up by hand, there being 
too many for the sow. This woman told me that she went out 
of the room leaving the pigs in the box, and on returning, found 
them both on the floor. One was lying down in the fender and 
the other in a corner of the room by some wood, neither place 
far from the chair, yet still they must have got there after the 
leap for which they were none the worse. The box was about 
a foot high — eight inches would be a minimum — and the chair 
of the usual height. This was at twelve o’clock, so that the pigs 
were only some eight or nine hours old at the time. When I 
saw them they were some thirteen hours old, and on the cloth 
being lifted from the box they sprang up, placing their feet on 
the edge of it (prepared, as it seemed, to leap over) with the 
energy and precision of full-grown pigs. It was truly astonishing, 
for their size was most minute. One of them drank whilst I 
was there from a saucer of warm milk which the woman brought 
it, in exactly the same way, as far as I could see, as a grown 
pig gets up swill. For this and the leaping up of the pigs with 
their feet on the edge of the box and their heads peering over 
it with great energy and precision of movement, I can myself 
vouch, as also for their extremely small size. For their leaping 
