what materials he makes it, what a great
chemist he must be to produce such admirable
results out of the diet on which he is too often
kept. A pig should be looked on as a living
laboratory for the conversion of refuse and garbage
of every sort and kind, into toothsome and agreeable
nutriment—a sort of pork-works, in short.
There is one charge which is too often brought
against these nice and clever creatures which it
is desirable to combat at once; it is the accusation
of obstinacy. "Them's a difficult animal
to drive, when there's many of 'em, is a pig—
very," says the Hampshire drover, and no
person who has ever seen a pig or pigs going to,
or from market, will be disposed to deny the
assertion. But, whence does this difficulty in the
conduct of these animals arise? Simply, the
writer contends, from their intellectual qualities.
The pig is perpetually consumed with a burning
thirst for information, and with a curiosity which
it may be freely owned verges on the morbid.
What turning does he come to, which he does
not wish to avail himself of? What road, what
lane, what footpath, that he does not desire to
explore? What object does he pass on the
way, which he does not turn to examine and to
note in all its aspects? Observe, too, his activity
in this pursuit of knowledge. He is from
one side of the road to the other in no time;
he runs ahead—nay, he is ready, suddenly
giving his unintellectual drivers the slip, to
run back any distance—that he may re-investigate
such matters as he may have passed
with too little notice, or may have examined in
too cursory a manner to satisfy his inquiring
mind.

Your Eye-witness was shocked, consequently,
when, on approaching that portion of the
building in Baker-street in which his favourites
were confined, he perceived the wretched
discomfort and misery of their condition. To
the best of his recollection there was not one
single instance in which a pig was to be found
who was able to stand, or to give any sign of
life beyond a feeble squeak in moments of a
nearer approach to suffocation than usual. They
had, none of them, any eyes; and the rolls of fat,
which looked like monster jam-puddings without
any jam in them, lay over every part of their
naturally intelligent faces except the extreme
tip of the snout, which worked convulsively in
their ineffectual efforts to breathe. The E.-W.
has no remembrance of a single tail being visible
in the whole collection, but he will swear to the
hoofs which grew immediately out of the
stomachs of the animals; the usual connecting
link of a leg being unable to assert itself. Your
Eye-witness would have thought that there
was not energy enough left in any one of these
afflicted creatures to enable him to burst, but
that later in the day (when in a remote part of
the building) he heard an explosive sound,
accompanied by a yell, which caused him to change
his opinion. "Un mortel expire," said the
French poet, when he saw a falling star—and
an uncommonly safe remark it was. "A pig
explodes," said the Eye-witness, when he heard
the sound just mentioned, and he thinks the one
aphorism, on the whole, quite equal in sagacity
to the other.

One word more, in seriousness. Let it be
understood, once and for all, that the successful
breeding and culture of an animal consists in
bringing it as near as possible to the standard
of symmetry established as the beau ideal of the
class to which it belongs. This should be the
canon of the Cattle Show; this the object of the
breeder; this the point looked to by the judges.
Were it so, now, and were the hideous disfigurement
of an animal by morbid growths of fat, a
disqualification instead of a recommendation,
then would this yearly show be a really
interesting and important exhibition. The
popularity of the Cattle Show as it at present
exists—but not as it might be—is little
calculated to correct the too general foreign
conception of our national prejudice; and it is
a wonderful and distressing thing to think in
how many respects this nation lays itself open
to ridicule in the eyes of those who are ever
awake to detect every one of our weaker
insularities.

There were many curious things observable
at the Cattle Show; but, among them all, perhaps
nothing more remarkable than a general
tendency on everybody's part to poke, probe, and
pinch, with the finger and thumb, the fat, bones,
and muscles of the different animals exhibited.
With the leading favourites, such as those
which had won medals and pecuniary prizes, or
which being more especially disfigured than the
others were labelled as being "highly
commended by the judges"—round all these there
was such a crowd of excited amateurs engaged
in this process of percussion, that it became
quite difficult to assert a hand anywhere, and in
the case of the prize ox, there was no getting so
much as a knuckle near, for love or money.
Stalwart prize farmers, who had once got within
probing distance of this unhappy beast, took
care to keep their position when they had got it,
and to make good use of it, too, digging him in
the ribs, going down on their knees to probe
him in the stomach, getting in front of him to
punch his head, and generally acting in a
manner which, if the theory of pummelling
rump-steaks be a good one, was calculated to make
this the tenderest animal ever slain. The
persistency of these honest personages was not
wholly unattended with danger, inasmuch as
men of powerful frames, prevented from
approaching the object of all this attention, would,
from distant parts of the building, make maniacal
thrusts with their fists at the animal's sides,
which, missing their mark, would sometimes
light upon the well-clothed ribs of those who
had secured the front places, and who—such was
the enthusiasm and excitement of the time—
seemed wholly unconscious of these desperate
and painful assaults. The force of example is
very great, and the Eye-witness, getting into
this crowd, was so hustled about, that he at
last found himself flung—with force—against
the prize ox itself; he is thus in a position to