ixed breeds, however,
the average is between 10 and 15, and in some instances has reached as
many as 20. But however few, or however many, young pigs there may be to
the farrow, there is always one who is the dwarf of the family circle, a
poor, little, shrivelled, half-starved anatomy, with a small melancholy
voice, a staggering gait, a woe-begone countenance, and a thread of a
tail, whose existence the complacent mother ignores, his plethoric
brothers and sisters repudiate, and for whose emaciated jaws there is
never a spare or supplemental teat, till one of the favoured
gormandizers, overtaken by momentary oblivion, drops the lacteal
fountain, and gives the little squeaking straggler the chance of a
momentary mouthful. This miserable little object, which may be seen
bringing up the rear of every litter, is called the Tony pig, or the
_Anthony_; so named, it is presumed, from being the one always assigned
to the Church, when tithe was taken in kind; and as St. Anthony was the
patron of husbandry, his name was given in a sort of bitter derision to
the starveling that constituted his dues; for whether there are ten or
fifteen farrows to the litter, the Anthony is always the last of the
family to come into the world.

772. FROM THE GROSSNESS OF HIS FEEDING, the large amount of aliment he
consumes, his gluttonous way of eating it, from his slothful habits,
laziness, and indulgence in sleep, the pig is particularly liable to
disease, and especially indigestion, heartburn, and affections of the
skin.

773. TO COUNTERACT THE CONSEQUENCE OF A VIOLATION OF THE PHYSICAL LAWS,
a powerful monitor in the brain of the pig teaches him to seek for
relief and medicine. To open the pores of his skin, blocked up with mud,
and excite perspiration, he resorts to a tree, a stump, or his
trough--anything rough and angular, and using it as a curry-comb to his
body, obtains the luxury of a scratch and the benefit of cuticular
evaporation; he next proceeds with his long supple snout to grub up
antiscorbutic roots, cooling salads of mallow and dandelion, and,
greatest treat of all, he stumbles on a piece of chalk or a mouthful of
delicious cinder, which, he knows by instinct, is the most sovereign
remedy in the world for that hot, unpleasant sensation he has had all
the morning at his stomach.

774. IT IS A REMARKABLE FACT that, though every one who keeps a pig
knows how prone he is to disease, how that disease injures the quality
of the m