4 
THE HOG. 
HISTORY. 
flesh for food both by the Egyptians and Jews. It may be doubted if any of these reasons are good with regard to the latter 
people. It is more safe to assume, that the prohibition of the use of swine’s flesh was a law, of whose ultimate purposes we are 
ignorant, connected with the ceremonial system of the Jewish ritual. We can no more know why the Hog was prohibited than 
some other animals, as the Hare, whose habits are in no degree unclean, and whose flesh has never been supposed to produce 
leprosy or other maladies of the country. 
Mohammed, in imitation probably of the Jews, or in compliance with prejudices existing in his own country, interdicted, in 
like manner, the flesh of the Hog to his disciples; and Mohammedans observe the law of the Prophet in every country, however 
suitable for this species of food. Here there is no Divine ordinance promulgated for purposes which to us are unknown; but the 
art of an impostor has prevailed against the common sense of mankind in a matter affecting the means of comfortable sub¬ 
sistence throughout a great part of the habitable world. 
The flesh of the Hog is nutritive and wholesome, and it is an error to suppose that it is more unsuited to warmer countries 
than any other species of animal food. On the contrary, this kind of flesh seems peculiarly suited to the warmer countries. It is 
in them that the animal arrives naturally at his greatest perfection of form, and his flesh at its greatest delicacy and excellence. 
It is the principal animal food made use of by the Chinese, and by the people of the hottest islands of the Indian Archipelago, 
and it is used by the Negroes all over the burning regions which they inhabit. The practice of Europeans, who reside in the 
warmest parts of the Old and New Continents, shows, that not only is the flesh of the Hog not unsuited to the warmer countries, 
but that it is the best and wholesomest that can be used. That it is the cause of leprosy, is not in accordance with effects observed. 
The Egyptians and Jews, who abstained from this food altogether, were the greatest victims of leprosy, while the people of the 
same countries who now feed upon it, are comparatively exempt from that terrible malady. 
All the older nations of Europe made large use of the flesh of the Hog. The Greeks fed much upon it, as innumerable re¬ 
ferences in their writings testify. To the Romans it afforded a large part of the food of the people. So much attention did the 
Romans pay to the rearing of the Hog, that their writers describe it as a branch of rural economy, under the term porculatio. 
They carried their fondness for this species of food to excess in their modes of preparing it for use, and numerous ordinances of the 
censors were passed against the supposed abuse. These rigid monitors prohibited the use of certain parts of the animal at festivals 
and repasts, as the mammae, the glands, the muzzle; but no laws could check the brutal gluttony of the Roman people. To produce 
a diseased state of the liver, they fed the animal on dried figs, and then killed him by repletion with honeyed wine A It was their 
custom to torture the animal to death, that a higher flavour might be given to its flesh. In the days of the Emperors, the dish 
called Poreus Trojanus became so extravagant with relation to expense, that sumptuary laws were passed to restrain the cost. This 
dish consisted of a Hog roasted whole, stuffed with animals of all kinds,—beccaficoes, thrushes, larks, nightingales, oysters,— 
bathed with the richest wines and gravies. The laws sought to restrain the excess of expense, but they could not cure the cor¬ 
ruption of manners, which called for brutal banquets without regard to animal suffering. 
The Hog, in the state of domestication, has spread over nearly all the world without the polar circles. He was not, how¬ 
ever, we have seen, indigenous to America, though he was carried thither by the earliest voyagers, and has now multiplied 
throughout the continent, wherever the descendants of Europeans are found. Neither was he found in New Holland, though now 
he has been transported thither, and finds a habitat as suitable as any other on the globe. This universal diffusion seems due 
to the remarkable fecundity of the animal in the domestic state, his easy maintenance, and his adaptation to almost every situation. 
Even in the wild state the female is prolific, but this faculty increases in a remarkable degree in the state of slavery. The Sow 
frequently gives birth to fifteen, to twenty, nay, sometimes she has been known to produce upwards of thirty at a birth, although 
she has not mammse to nourish such a number. She is comparatively a long-lived animal, living to the age of twenty years or 
more: she is ready to receive the male before she has reached the age of twelve months, and of giving birth to two litters in the 
year, or even to five litters in two years. M. Vauban, the great military engineer, made, long ago, a calculation of the possible 
produce of an ordinary Sow hi ten years. He allows twelve at a litter, and excludes from his calculation the males, which yet 
would be as numerous as the females. The result is, that, in eleven years, which is equivalent to ten generations, there would be 
6,434,838 pigs, or, taking round numbers, six millions of pigs, which is about the number existing in France. Were we to 
extend our calculation, says M. Vauban, to the 12th generation, we should find as great a number to result as all Europe is 
capable of maintaining; and were the calculation extended to the 16th generation, there would be as great a number as would people 
the whole globe. With powers of production so great as this animal possesses, it will appear that, let the consumption be ever 
so great, the largest means will exist of supplying it. Let us contrast this vast power of increase with that of another of the 
* Plinii Historia Naturalis, Lib. viii. 
