and challenge more care and attention than are usually bestowed upon them. A due regard to the breed which the peculiar circumstances of the farm may call for is particularly necessary, as some breeds are much better suited to pasture, and feed upon grass and herbs, than others. The most hardy and best qualified to prog for themselves are the Chinese, a cross with which breed upon almost any other may, under most circumstances, be prudently recommended. Let the breed be what it may, a well-proportioned stock to every farm will most abundantly requite the care and repay the expense of the necessary food provided for them. A few acres of clover would be well applied to the use of the hogs in summer; but in the sty it would be well to restrain them to a certain quantity of water, and to lodge them clean and dry, notwithstanding the wilful neglect and too prevailing opinion to the contrary; for cleanliness is as essential to the preservation of their health and well-doing as to that of any other animal.'
"These views are very different from those of a writer in the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, who says, 'It is greatly doubted by many competent judges, whether swine form a profitable stock, at least when fed on food which requires to be raised for the purpose. The results deduced from calculations entered into, to show the probable return for a given quantity of grain, roots, or other vegetable produce, are, however, so discordant as to avail but little in the formation of a settled and conclusive opinion. In connexion with distilleries, dairies, breweries, and other large establishments, they are of much higher and assured importance, and return, in proportion to the offal they consume, a great quantity of meat. Their chief advantage as live stock probably consists in their being nourished by what would otherwise either prove nearly useless, or be entirely lost. When potatoes are raised as a fallow crop, exceeding the demands of human consumption, the rearing of swine for bacon and pickled pork becomes an advisable branch of rural economy.'
"No one, we presume, would keep pigs without having the means of feeding them at his command, all necessary conveniences, and a proper system of management. Under such circumstances they will return ample profit, a fact well known in America, where the hog is important to a degree elsewhere unknown, Ireland not excepted.
"If this animal is profitable to proprietors of large establishments, to great distillers, to millers, to farmers and dairymen, so it is to the laboring peasant who cultivates a little garden, and collects the refuse of the kitchens of his wealthier neighbors; he will have two or three litters in the course of the year, saleable as 'sucking pigs' at the age of three or four weeks, and at Christmas he will kill two, three, or four fat pigs, and find a ready sale for the meat, besides turning part into bacon for his own family. This is no theory;
