[Illustration: CUMBERLAND SOW.]

784. THOUGH ALMOST EVERY COUNTRY IN ENGLAND can boast some local variety
or other of this useful animal, obtained from the native stock by
crossing with some of the foreign kinds, Cumberland and the north-west
parts of the kingdom have been celebrated for a small breed of white
pigs, with a thick, compact, and well-made body, short in the legs, the
head and back well formed, ears slouching and a little downwards, and on
the whole, a hardy, profitable animal, and one well disposed to fatten.

785. THERE IS NO VARIETY OF THIS USEFUL ANIMAL that presents such
peculiar features as the species known to us as the Chinese pig; and as
it is the general belief that to this animal and the Neapolitan hog we
are indebted for that remarkable improvement which has taken place in
the breeds of the English pig, it is necessary to be minute in the
description of this, in all respects, singular animal. The Chinese, in
the first place, consists of many varieties, and presents as many forms
of body as differences of colour; the best kind, however, has a
beautiful white skin of singular thinness and delicacy; the hair too is
perfectly white, and thinly set over the body, with here and there a few
bristles. He has a broad snout, short head, eyes bright and fiery, very
small fine pink ears, wide cheeks, high chine, with a neck of such
immense thickness, that when the animal is fat it looks like an
elongated carcase,--a mass of fat, without shape or form, like a feather
pillow. The belly is dependent, and almost trailing on the ground, the
legs very short, and the tail so small as to be little more than a
rudiment. It has a ravenous appetite, and will eat anything that the
wonderful assimilating powers of its stomach can digest; and to that
capability, there seems no limit in the whole range of animal or
vegetable nature. The consequence of this perfect and singularly rapid
digestion is an unprecedented proneness to obesity, a process of
fattening that, once commenced, goes on with such rapid development,
that, in a short time, it loses all form, depositing such an amount of
fat, that it in fact ceases to have any refuse part or offal, and,
beyond the hair on its back and the callous extremity of the snout, _the
whole carcase is eatable_.

[Illustration: CHINESE SOW.]

786. WHEN JUDICIOUSLY FED ON VEGETABLE DIET, and this obese tendency
checked, the flesh of the Chinese pig is extremely delicate and
del