The English pigs are better fed than the
Irish, but the latter are more important to
their owners; for it remains too often true
that the pig is "the gintleman that pays the
rint." They are often bedded better than the
children of the cotter, and if he had anything
better than potatoes to give them, he would
do so; but he has not, hence, Irish bacon and
pork are somewhat coarse. Almost the
whole of this comes over to England, for poor
Paddy can seldom afford to eat his own pig.
Pig-jobbers, Mr. Inglis tells us, attend in
large numbers at Irish markets and fairs.
A pig-dealer would come to a countryman
who held a pig by a string, " How much do
you ask?"  "Twenty-eight shillings," the
answer might be. " Hold out yer hand,"
says the buyer; and the proprietor of the pig
holds out his hand accordingly. The buyer
places a penny in it, and then strikes it with
a force that might break the back of an
ox. " Will ye take twenty shillings? " The
other shakes his head. "Ask twenty-four,
and see if I will give it yer." After a
little more bargaining, the purchase is agreed
on, and perhaps an odd shilling spent in
whiskey.

The sides of Irish bacon are sent, roughly
salted, to London, Liverpool, Bristol, and
other English ports; they are consigned to
bacon-curers or provision-merchants, who
complete the necessary processes, and render
the flitches and hams fit for sale. The lard
or fat of a pig " takes salt," as it is termed,
very readily, and hence the fitness of pork for
salting and curing. Attempts have often been
made to guess at the number of pigs, and the
quantity of pig-produce, which reach England
from Ireland; but, since the trade between
the two countries has been assimilated to a
coasting trade, authentic data are wanting.
In 1837, the number of pigs which crossed
Saint George's Channel was seven hundred
thousand; but steam-navigation must since
have increased this number. With respect
to the metropolis, about forty thousand pigs
are annually sold in Smithfield, fifteen
thousand sucking pigs at Newgate Market, one
hundred thousand to one hundred and twenty
thousand stone of dead pig at the same
market, and five hundred thousand stone
at Leadenhall. Most of this is English
produce.

The remarkable processes by which pig-
meat is cured, are best illustrated, perhaps,
by Westphalia hams. The hams are piled up
in deep tubs and covered with layers of salt,
saltpetre, and a small quantity of bay leaves.
In this situation they are left for five days;
a strong pickle of salt and water is then
made in which the hams are immersed; and
when this pickle has thoroughly penetrated
the meat, the hams are soaked for twelve
hours in pure spring water. They are lastly
hung up for three weeks in a smoke made
from juniper bushes, which in that country
are very plentiful. Some of the French
chemists have made a fierce onslaught on
saltpetre, as an agent in curing hams and
bacon; they say that the nitric acid clings to
the meat in too obstinate a manner, and that
most of the ill effects of such food, when eaten
too exclusively, may be traced to the saltpetre;
they recommend sugar in the place of
saltpetre.

The fresh pork, the salt pork, the head, the
bacon, the pettitoes, the black-puddings (in
which the blood of pig takes a part) -- these
are the forms in which our friend the
grunter contributes to the dinner-table. But
his uses do not end here. There is the lard,
there is the skin, there are the bristles. The
lard, made by a careful treatment of pig-fat,
is an exceedingly pure substance, and is
employed in numberless ways by the cook,
the apothecary, and the perfumer. Ointments
have very generally lard as one of their
ingredients; and as for perfumery, if the
bear's grease, and the marrow oil, and the
Circassian cream, and the pomade divine, and
the lip-salve -- if they could speak, they would,
doubtless, have much to say concerning the
virtues of lard.

Pig-skin is converted into a leather, and a
very tough leather it makes; so tough, indeed,
that no other equals it as a material for
saddles. A hard rider would soon rub and
thump a saddle to death, were it formed of
anything less obdurate than pig-skin; and
hence pig-skin has come to have a sort of
figurative meaning among equestrians. It is
also used for pocket-books, and for some
other purposes. The supply of pig leather
depends upon the prevalence, or otherwise, of
the practice of cooking pork with the skin on;
very little pig-leather is derived from English
pigs. In Mexico the skins of hogs, blown up
like bladders, serve as water-bags for the
itinerant water-dealers.

But a much more important piggish
contribution to man's use consists in bristles.
These bristles are used in England to an
enormous amount; and it is found that
Russia and Prussia are almost the only
countries which can furnish us with the
requisite supply. The bristles of small pigs
are short and slender; the only good kinds
are obtained from large hogs. About two
million pounds of bristles are imported
annually, all taken from the top of the hog's
back, where alone they are large and strong
enough. It has been calculated that an
average bristle weighs about two grains,
that about a pound is yielded by each hog,
that two million Russian and Prussian hogs
have thus annually to contribute to the wants
of the English brush-maker, and that the
number of individual bristles thus contributed
cannot be much less than seven thousand
millions! The bristles are variously coloured,
and are sorted before being used by the brush-
maker; they are dressed by a sort of combing
process, and are sometimes bleached. Great is
the number of species in the brush genus, to