The breed is of that various mixture I have already quoted, but without any pug, and although they appear rather of small size in their store state, and of the deep, flat form, they make very high weights, and in the opinion of my friend, feed as quickly as tonks. One sow had the remarkable litter of eleven, all boar-pigs. I have been since given to understand, that this gentleman's labourers have refused to eat his over-fattened pork. It is not improbable, but there are individual hogs, which might be fattened to the weight of more than 120 or 130 stone.

Hogs being destined by nature to devour and turn to profit the refuse of all eatable things, the circumstance is not overlooked by the refuse and scum of all trades and occupations. In the good city of Paris, as we learn from the Report of last year by Chaussier to the School of Medicine, pigs are fed upon horseflesh, and as many horses die diseased, particularly glandered, Chaussier expresses his apprehensions on the subject, and requests the opinion of the School. The opinion was, that the method of feeding and fattening pigs with horse-flesh can be attended with no ill consequence, nor can occasion any diseases in persons consuming the flesh of pigs so fed. That as to the case of glandered horses, the digestive powers of the animals destroy every deleterious property of animal substances eaten; that at the Veterinary School, various animals ate of the flesh of glandered horses without any ill effect; and that in a bordering country, there are various shops, where the carcases of all kinds of all animals, which would be otherwise left to rot, are carefully collected and manufactured into oil, glue, sal ammoniac, prussiate of iron, and Prussian blue; the boilings and refuse serving to feed annually a quantity of fat, healthy pigs, great part of which are pickled for long voyages. In France this mode

of pig-feeding is said to be not above thirty years old, but not being conducted at the commencement, with sufficient privacy, it awakened ill-grounded and anti-commercial prejudices! English reader, after thou hast finished thy comments on continental delicacy, vouchsafe to be informed, that in thine own city of London, no horse-boiler of any eminence or respectability, but fats his sty of pigs upon the soup and bouilli. Once again, caveat emptor.

QUANTITIES OF CORN.-Fifty large Norfolks, thriving fast, between 18 and 19 stone each, consumed per day, on the average, 4 bushels of pease, with wash, or about three quarts each, daily. Hants sow about 11 stone, store state, ate daily 24 quarts pease, with roots and wash. White hog (chiefly Shropshire) nearly three years old, in fleshy store state, weighing by estimation, nearly 80 stone, consumed three bushels barley-meal, with house-wash, regularly, every seventeen days, or 11 pints per day, the owner assuring me of the accuracy of the account. Earl of Winchelsea's prize pig (1803) of the Suffolk breed, ate of corn and meal, in fourteen weeks three days, 1 qr. 1 bush. 1 pk. or upwards, or 2 pecks per week.-A Kentish hog, weighing, at six months old, 161 lbs. or 20 stone 1lb. and in forty-two weeks from that period 53 stone 3 lb. (London bacon fashion, or stripped of head, feet, flare, loose fat, skirts, and kidneys) consumed within the forty-two weeks, 46 bushels of pease and barley. Black and white Essex pig (tonky) weighing at four months old 104 lb. consumed in forty-seven weeks, 11 bushels 2 pecks hog pease and 18 sacks of meal at 85 lb. per sack, dying in about three weeks after, 33 stone 2 lb. London fashion. A pig weighing 388 lb. or 48 stone alive, consumed in thirty-one days, three bushels barley-meal mixed with water.

Count Burghaus, director of the economico-poli

tical society of Helvetia, has lately discovered that hogs' SKINS make an excellent leather for the use of saddle, harness, traces, &c. much stronger than horse or cow leather (alas! to my sorrow be it said, that I must take precedence of the Count for skinning of pigs) and that he has found, contrary to former opinion, that the flesh will take salt well without the skin, and that the salt and smoke penetrate more readily, the bacon acquiring a finer flavour. I should doubt bacon keeping well without the defensive rind.

In singeing a hog for BACON, the skin should be free from dirt. In London, and indeed wherever large quantities of bacon are made, the sides are preserved in pickle until wanted; but if so kept any great length of time, the salt corrodes and diminishes the flesh or lean in the country-house, bacon is taken out of pickle as soon as perfectly cured, and hung up to dry, in which state it will keep any length, if in a mode. rate and even temperature, but it will be affected by alternate changes, and become rusty. Excess in the quantity of salt-petre will render the meat hard, and apt to disagree with weak stomachs. The solid flare, or internal fat, in a bacon hog, is expected to amount to 1 lb. per stone, upon the whole weight of the hog; but the tonky sort, which accumulate so much fat externally, have seldom so much within.

We heard great complaints last year, of the low price of barley, but the following instance will prove, that barley might really have been sold at a very high price in the shape of swine's flesh. A gentleman within twenty miles of London, had two in-pig sows sent him out of Herefordshire; they produced him twenty pigs, which were sold in autumn, being under ten months old, and in fleshy store state, at £5.2s. 6d. each.

The NUMBER of OXEN and cows weekly exposed to

sale in Smithfield Market, is about 2,000 on an average, or full 100,000 annually: of SHEEP near 10,000 weekly, or 500,000 per year: of swine 300 weekly, or 15,000 in the year: of horses KILLED in London, weekly, between 4 and 500; in the environs, upwards of 100. The cruel sufferings and tortures of these last, during the latter period of their services, form an actual hell for minds of much sensibility; and for which there can be no remedy but a general improvement of morals, a consummation scarcely within the most distant hope.

Any minute particulars relative to the subject of swine, omitted here, will probably be found in The New Farmer's Calendar.

460

ON

CATTLE MEDICINE:

PROPOSALS FOR ITS

ESTABLISHMENT ON A RATIONAL FOUNDATION.

VIEW OF DISEASES AND REMEDIES.

Venienti occurrite

Learn to PREVENT, rather than to CURE, Diseases.

I HAVE, both in the Treatise on Horses, and elsewhere, expatiated on the strange but well-known fact, that the medical care of our domestic animals has been, by custom, both of ancient and modern times, committed to persons devoid of education and science, in course totally unacquainted with the animal economy, and of the nature and operation of medicine. These men, learning by rote certain forms of prescription, either from tradition of their seniors and preceptors, or from some printed collection of equal authority, are at once qualified for the cure of all diseases, independently of the aid of experience, comparison, or reflection, of which too generally, and with few exceptions, their minds, from defect of due culture, must be altogether incapable. Although a custom like this, however absurd, extravagant, and dangerous, might be tolerated in former and less en