things, the E.-W. recommenced his cross-
examination of the young man with the smile.
Finding that there was yet another story due—
the allowance being three per evening—finding
also that the sense of suffocation with which he
had commenced the evening had not subsided,
and that his nerves were in such a state of
tension that he could no longer meet the eye of the
baby opposite—he came to the determination that
it was time to go. That baby opposite had
never for one moment ceased to glare at the
Eye-witness, and was now sitting bolt upright
in its mother's lap, and dying (hard) of tobacco-
smoke.

                       PORK.

A NOTICE of the pig and his pork naturally
follows the history of the rise and progress of
British mutton;* although, in the order of civilisation,
the pig precedes the sheep, being an animal
well able to get his own living, and take a part
in semi-savage life, while the sheep demands daily
care, "fresh fields and pastures new."

* See page 57.

At least half the theories about pig breeding,
and the tales on which the theories are founded,
are without any solid foundation, and some of the
most universally received statements are open to
doubt. For instance, the popular notion that
the domestic pig is a descendant from the wild
boar, is contradicted by all existing evidence.
The original of domestic cattle, of sheep, horses,
and of camels, has never been found in a wild
state. The wild white cattle of Tankerville Park
are as wild now as they were two centuries ago;
and we share the opinion of very good authorities
that domestic breeds of most animals, pigs
included, have existed as long as domestic man.

The wild boar is everything that a profitable
hog should not be. He is long in the head,
high in the hand and spring, wonderfully
deficient in hams and flitches; he is active, bony,
and has more hide and bristles than good meat.
It is quite possible to imagine a gradual improvement
that would soften his hide and mollify his
bristles; but it is difficult to conceive that, in a
less civilised and settled age than the present,
hog breeders devoted themselves from generation
to generation to breeding wild hogs into shape
and tameness, and much more probable that a
better shaped tameable breed has always existed.
It is a significant fact that, in those very
countries where the wild hog is still plentiful in
the woods, there is to be found a domesticated,
or semi-domesticated pig, of an entirely
different character from the one who enjoys a
savage roving life on chesnuts and acorns of
Germany, of Servia, and the other pig-breeding
Danubian Provinces.

Hogs are grown for pork and hams and bacon
and sausages; also, in certain parts of
Europe, for hides and bristles alone. Fat these
latter breeds don't produce at all. It is not on
bacon that the Burlington Arcade hair-brushes
are grown. The best bristles thrive upon very
lean soil. The English hog is grown for his
meat only. His hide and bristles are not counted
in calculating his value, and our large
experience in this branch of live stock does not
register one instance of skinning any British pig
that had died a butcher's death. There is every
reason to believe that from the earliest times
recorded in history, herds of a very good sort of
pig for the purpose were kept by our British
and Saxon ancestors in those districts where
acorn and other mast-bearing trees abounded.
It is probable that these pigs were both
black and white; white in the north, black in
the south. Occasionally an alliance was formed
with the wild-boar breed, and then a red pig
was the result. But Germany, from north to
south, possesses a large breed of white pigs,
known as the Podolian; which, although coarse,
are not the least like a wild boar. The French
Crayonnaise is a variety of the German, and is
best variety. The black and white pig of the
old English style may be seen admirably
delineated in our old friend Bewick's Quadrupeds
—large framed, coarse, prolific—but making good
bacon, and plenty of it, when fat: such flitches as
no wild boar could produce. He remained in
favour until the march of agriculture, and the
axioms of Bakewell, of Dishley, demanded a
better animal, and this was produced by crosses
of a pig from the East and a pig from the
South of Europe—two valuable immigrants in
the early part of the present century.

In the memory of people of the present
generation who have not begun to grow grey or
eschew fox-hunting, the long, flat-sided, herring-
backed, flop-eared, much-bristled, thick-skinned,
slow-fattening, endless consumer of food, drawn
by Bewick, was to be found in almost every
county in England; while, in Ireland thirty
years ago, a black monster of the same form was
the great rent payer of that distracted island;
consequently, to be seen in thousands daily
passing from the quays of Bristol and Liverpool
in a half-grown state, to be finished on the richer
English food. But the famine year in Ireland
destroyed the greater number of these unprofitable
brutes, and the rest have been so
extinguished by crosses with superior English tribes,
that, at the present day, whole cargoes of Irish
pigs are exported, models of piggish symmetry.
The English animal of the same sort, that
afforded us, in petticoat days, many a racing
gallop from the home-field to the pigsties
(sitting the reverse way, and holding on hard by
the long curly tail), has almost disappeared under
the influence of Bakewellian innovation.

Indeed at present, although books devoted to
the subject attempt to describe a vast number
of breeds, there are not really above four or
five tribes worth noticing, and not perhaps
more than two or three breeds. Every one
smitten with the noble ambition of being a
prize winner gives his collection a name. Thus
we have Coleshill, Bushy, Windsor, the Brown,
the Jones, and the Robinson breed; but, with a
few exceptions, the differences, if any, are of
size and colour. There are large breeds nearly