THE HOG. 
o 
O 
HISTORY. 
in pursuit. M. Schomburgk himself first came upon the herd : he found them in a muddy pool of water, wallowing and enjoying 
themselves, the younger ones in the centre. When within fifteen yards, the sentinel observed him : his bristles rose, and turning 
towards the intruder, he clashed his teeth; the next instant he was prostrate, pierced by the ball of the rifle. The traveller 
graphically describes the bustle, the rush, the clashing of the tusks of the herd, which sought security in rapid flight in the op¬ 
posite direction. They were followed by the party, and M. Schomburgk himself, having given up his arms, remained alone. 
In a little time he heard a rushing noise approaching through the thickets, and the well known growl and clashing of teeth left 
him in no doubt as to the cause. The herd had divided, and a part was coming directly upon him. He stood alone, unarmed, 
and had not even a knife to defend himself. He knew not how he climbed the lower part of a mora tree, when past they rushed, 
their rough bristles erect, and their muzzles almost sweeping the ground. They came and passed, he says, like a whirlwind, and 
before he had recovered his astonishment he heard them plunge into the river and swim to the opposite bank.* 
These little Hogs do not breed with the common race, and they had not been domesticated by the native inhabitants. They 
are far inferior in economical uses to the Swine of Europe, which were introduced by the Spaniards, have multiplied wherever the 
European settler has formed his home, and have even found their way into the woods, and increased in the state of liberty. 
From the earliest times the Hog has been subjected to domestication; and the undoubted original of the domestic races of 
Europe, and the greater part, if not all, of those of Asia and Africa, is the W 7 ild Hog, Sits ctper. This powerful creature seems 
formed by Nature to submit himself to the uses of man; and it is not surprising that, abounding in almost every habitable region 
of the Old Continent, he should have been every where captured and enslaved. But we are not entitled to say that all the do¬ 
mesticated races of the world have the same descent. We are yet too imperfectly acquainted with the subdued races of the in¬ 
terior of Africa to be able to maintain that they are all descended from the Wild Hog; and in the countries of the Indian 
Archipelago and the South Seas, it may be that other species, endowed likewise with the faculty of resigning their natural wildness, 
and changing their characters under the influence of domestication, have been reduced to slavery. 
The flesh of the Hog furnished food to the inhabitants of Europe, and other regions of the Old Continents, beyond all the 
records of tradition and history. By most of the ancient nations his flesh was in great estimation, but by others it was held in 
the utmost abhorrence. The Egyptians not only abstained from the flesh of the Hog, but regarded the very touch of the living 
animals as pollution, and the persons employed in tending them as degraded outcasts. The same feeling was entertained by the 
Hindoos, from whom, beyond a doubt, the Egyptians derived a great part of their arts and religious observances. 
In the marvellous Commonwealth of Moses, a like abstinence from the flesh of the Hog was enjoined upon all the people of 
Israel. The Levitical code upon this subject is precise: and in the precepts, warnings, and threatenings of the Prophets, the use 
of swine’s flesh is denounced as a breach of the law, and an abomination in the sight of God. The Jews were not even permitted 
to offer this detested creature as a victim of the sacrifice, as the Egyptians were allowed to do, and as the Greeks, Romans, 
and other people practised. The sacrifice of the Hog is declared to be an abomination to the Lord, and is compared in the 
degree of guilt with the killing of a human victim, or the immolation of a dog. To precepts so clear, and denunciations so terrible, 
is to be ascribed that unconquerable aversion to the unclean beast which the Jewish people came at length to entertain to such a 
degree, that they would not even pronounce its name; and no example, mockery, or persecution, ever brought them to adopt the 
usages of other nations in this respect. Yet it is known that great numbers of Hogs were reared in the country of the Jews, 
probably for the uses of the strangers who dwelt amongst them, or for the purposes of traffic with the neighbouring countries. 
But even now, when all the glory of their beloved land is but to them a splendid vision,—when their altars and tabernacles have 
mouldered into dust with the temples of the idolators and the palaces of their tyrants,—when nearly twenty centuries have seen 
them scattered like chaff over every land,—the humblest mendicant that boasts the blood of Jacob would not pollute his lips with 
the food which his forefathers held it impious to taste. 
Writers have laboured to explain the reason of this remarkable prohibition against the use of an aliment so wholesome and 
nutritious as the flesh of the Hog. One writer will have it, that it was owing to the filthiness of the animal, and the impurity of 
his food, the law carefully providing against all filth in the fields, the camp, or in cities: f another maintains that it was a lesson 
to the Jews to abstain from the sensuality and grossness of which this animal was typical.| Tacitus informs us, that the Jews 
abstained from it in consequence of a leprosy by which they formerly suffered, and to which the animal itself was subject; and the 
common opinion is, that the use of swine’s flesh is calculated to produce that leprosy to which it is known the inhabitants of 
Palestine, and the neighbouring countries, including Egypt, were subject. To this lias been attributed the rigid interdiction of its 
* Menageries ; Lib. of Ent. Know. vol. iii. 
t Maimonides, More Nevochim. 
| Lactantius, Inst. 
