American farming and stock raising, with useful facts for the household, devoted to farming in all its departments . panisli stock, have a plumed tail. With respect to color, feral pigs generallyrevert to that of the wild boar ; but in certain parts of South America, as we have seen,some of the semi-feral pigs have a curious white band across their stomachs ; and in certainother hot places the pigs are red, and this color has hkewise occasionally been observed inthe feral pigs of Jamaica. From these several facts we see that with pigs, when feral, thereis a strong tendency to revert to the wil
American farming and stock raising, with useful facts for the household, devoted to farming in all its departments . panisli stock, have a plumed tail. With respect to color, feral pigs generallyrevert to that of the wild boar ; but in certain parts of South America, as we have seen,some of the semi-feral pigs have a curious white band across their stomachs ; and in certainother hot places the pigs are red, and this color has hkewise occasionally been observed inthe feral pigs of Jamaica. From these several facts we see that with pigs, when feral, thereis a strong tendency to revert to the wild type; but that this tendency is largely governed bythe nature of the climate, amount of exercise, and other causes of change to which they havebeen subjected. The last point worth notice is, that we have unusually good evidence of breeds of pigsnow keeping perfectly true which have been formed by the crossing of several distinctbreeds. The Improved Essex pigs, for instance, breed very true ; but there is no doubt thattbey largely owe their present excellent qualities to crosses originally made by Lord Western. OLD IBISH PIG. 1198 THE AMERICAN FARMER. with the Neapolitan race, and to subsequent crosses with the Berkshire breed (this alsohaving been improved by Neapolitan crosses), and likewise, probably, with the Sussex breeds thus formed by complex crosses, the most careful and unremitting selection duringmany generations has been found to be indispensable. Chiefly in consequence of so muchcrossing, some well-known breeds have undergone rapid changes, thus, according to Nathu-sius, the Berkshire breed of 1780 is quite difierent from that of 1810 ; and since this latterperiod at least two distinct forms have borne the same name. These wild hogs sometimes growvery large, but usually are less in sizethan our domestic swine. The engraving,of the old Irish Greyhound pig, exhibitsan intermediate animal, a kind of con-necting link between the wild and domes-tic hog. Richard
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectagriculture, bookyear
