fat. So much for the historical and genealogical
part of an agricultural subject, on which the
records are remarkably scanty.

Having started with the principle that it is
never worth while to have a coarse, ill-bred pig
in your sty or your fields, although it may
answer your purpose to take the sow of the
country and improve your stock by a foreign
alliance, the question still remains whether your
stock shall be black or white, small or large,
thin-skinned, aldermanic, and comparatively
helpless, or hardy and active. It is quite
certain that, although a prize pig may be
helpless, for profit, a pig must have constitution
enough to graze for his living while growing
to full size. The colour must be ruled by the
fashion of your market; for, although all pigs
are alike when roasted or cured, or even when
singed, there are districts where the butchers,
speaking for their customers, won't give a full
price for a black sucker or porker. Then, again,
in the west of England, it is a popular and
probably well-founded opinion that white pigs set
to roam in the fields blister and suffer from the
sun, and, therefore, black pigs are preferred.

The size must be selected with a view to the
ultimate destination of Master Pig. Of course
the utmost quantity of meat cannot be put on
an animal until it has finished making bone.
If, therefore, your grunter is doomed to die
early, as dairy-fed pork, the small, genteel size
will suit you best; if, on the contrary, he is
intended to roam the fields with a hundred
companions, under the charge of a ragged,
truant, donkey-riding boy of a swineherd, as is
the case in Hampshire and Dorsetshire, and
to be finished off on full supplies of dairy
waste, skim milk, buttermilk, or cheese whey,
or the droppings of a mill, then a middle size
will be more profitable; but if he is to roam in
a forest, or be fed off the grains of a brewery,
then, if symmetrical, he may be as big as
possible. It is well observed in the already
quoted "Sidney's Pig," that a small breed is
very well for porkers, but not for the flitch; a
good little animal is good, but the ordinary
demand is for a good, big animal, "one that
cuts up wide over the back, well interlarded with
fat and lean." A Frenchman or a German,
who may be considered to stand in the same
position as regards pig-breeding that Englishmen
did fifty, and Irishmen five-and-twenty
years ago, is very well satisfied if he can get his
long-legged animal half fat at two or three years
old, and even then half his weight goes in snout,
ears, bone, and skin. But a couple of active,
lively pigs, of an improved breed, pigs
well able to travel a long day's journey
six days before being put up to fatten, were
exhibited at one of our recent English
agricultural shows, weighing twelve score pounds
at seven months old. An average hog of the
best breed can be fed off at ten score pounds for
hams, or kept until he reaches fifteen score for
making bacon. On the famous Cheddar cheese
dairy farms it is found that the ham-curer
prefers the small Berkshire breed at from nine to
twelve score pounds. Round Brighton, Bath,
and Cheltenham, small pork is the paying
article. The happy medium lies between
the lean and lively Irish of the past, or
the Frenchman or German of the present day,
and the little prize-winning obesities, few at
litter, difficult to rear, unable to trot or travel,
susceptible of cold or heat, dainty in food, but
wonderful in talent for fattening, although, when
fed with care, only fit to be shown for a prize;
and then, if not suffocated on the way to or
from the show, to be converted into lard, or
mere fat bacon, without streaks. These
monstrosities, useful in their way, are the animals
that bring the English hog into disrepute with
the foreign pig-breeder. It must, however, be
mentioned, that there is a lean animal in Austria
as unprolific as unprofitable.

M. le Vicomte des Saucissons, or the Baron
von Gruntz, on being sent over on a special
mission by a government, or an agricultural
society, buys, at some fabulous price, boars
and sows which have lost all their constitution
in feeding up to win a prize; removed to
countries where the value of cleanliness, shelter,
and variety of nourishing food is unknown alike
to pig and peasantry, the grunting darlings
either pine away or fail to produce more than
one or two weakly porkers. And so English
pigs fall into disrepute, and the name of Hobbs
is taken in vain. If these agricultural
ambassadors had chosen from the best blood of
the fold-yard instead of the prize pen; if
they had gone to the best dairy farms, and there
chosen the primest offspring of sows and boars
of good pedigree, but unspoiled by the forcing,
cramming process, then they would have
obtained quality, early maturity, and symmetry.
Blood and pedigree are essential for improving
an inferior breed of horses, cattle, sheep, or
pigs, but they are useless without constitution.
In a word, the source of an immense improvement
in the quantity and quality of the continental
bacon manufacture, with constitution enough to
travel as far, if not as fast, as the longest-legged
greyhound pig that ever astonished the eyes of
an English farmer on his travels. But these
prize-winning tribes, although not good to
transplant, or safe investments for ordinary
farming purposes, have their natural value.
The best specimens tell us where we may go to
find good blood for improving inferior breeds.

They occupy, in a less degree, the same place
in animal economy that the thorough-bred horse
does. The thorough-bred is only by exception of
use for harness, for road,for hack, or for fox hunter,
but it affords first-rate specimens of each, and is
indispensable for keeping up the wind, speed,
and beauty of every kind of horse except the
heavy draught horse. In fact, the English hog has
gone through the same course, but in a more
complete and rapid degree, as cattle and sheep, since
Bakewell's time. First, a few select and fashionable
breeders produced a select and fashionable
breed, with the advantages of much good meat,
little offal, symmetry, and early maturity, but
not sufficiently prolific, too delicate, and not large