1 Dec., 1899.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 541 
body without excessive width ; (2) limbs strong and of medium size; and (3) 
head and ears and neck of medium size. That is not a bacon pig which has a 
very short, compact body, a frame broad in proportion to its length, and that 
stands on small and short legs. It is a lard pig. Nor is that a bacon pig which 
1s razor-hack and greyhound in its build. It is a scrub that would soon eat its 
Owner poor. The bacon pig is not a hard feeder. It is a pig that will turn its 
food, not into an unhealthy substance that melts away in cooking, but it will 
turn it into a good meat. 
Such a pig as is here illustrated is not “a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.” 
As a comparison, it is neither so attractive as the gay gos-hawk nor so endearing 
as the gentle gazelle, but it is, nevertheless, useful. As a piece of furniture, it 
may lack the artistic belongings of Buhl work, or the sesthetic feeling of 
Chippendale’s productions ; it has, nevertheless. its solid proportions; and when 
killed and cured and displayed in hams and gammons in the fitful glow of the 
evening firelicht of the Linnigia spacious kitchen, there is something to be said, 
after all, for the solidifying comfort of the porker. In distant days, when man 
was free from the trammels of steam and electricity, and the confines of travel 
were only narrowed by the possibilities of what he could perform on shank’s 
mare, unless he was affluent and possessed a four-legged one, pigs and poultry 
too were at liberty to indulge their nomadic tastes without the deterring 
influences of barbed-wire fences and other drawbacks. Swine then “lived in 
clover,” so to speak; they scoured the hills and the valleys in search of 
provender, and singly and in herds travelled in one day, so far as distance runs, 
more than they now cover in a month. But these were the times when the 
pig was not the valuable article of commerce that it now is. The animal had to. 
look after itself, with the result that it possessed many of the characteristics 
belonging to its natural, or rather wild, state. 14 was not pampered and fed for 
Weight, nor was it fed for points. A glance at the accompanying illustration 
The Razor-back Pig. 
will be instructive: “Look on the above picture”—the wiry and alert old- 
fashioned razor-back. The process of levelling up the pig as we now know it, 
trom its trisky-looking progenitor, has occupied many years, but the labour hasmet 
with its reward. The animal, point for point, is far more valuable than it was, 
and the fecundity of the type suffered in the development of size and weight. 
Under existing circumstances the life of a pig cannot be a particularly enviable 
One, as animal lite goes, for the depressing effect of having to carry about so 
‘Mnuch flesh, even at an early period in its career, must rid the days of much 
of their porcine gaiety. If the swine of mythology were over-fed and endowed 
with the fleshy proportions of their type of to-day, then the lot of the sportive 
Companions of (hikes must have been an unhappy one after the enchantress 
Circe had cast her spell upon them. 
