immediately raised, and towards the afternoon a person gave information that two pigs had been seen swimming across the river at nearly its broadest part.
"They were afterwards observed trotting along the Pangbourn road, and in one place where the road branches off, putting their noses together as if in deep consultation. The result was their safe return to the place from which they had originally been conveyed to Reading, a distance of nine miles, and by cross roads.
"The farmer from whom they had been purchased, brought them back to their owner, but they took the very first opportunity again to escape, recrossing the water like two dogs, thus removing the stigma on their race, which proverbially disqualifies them for 'swimming without cutting their own throats,' and never stopped until they found themselves at their first home."
Here we see difficulties overcome, and a strange element encountered, in order to arrive at a far distant spot—the home to which the animals were attached. Some recollection of that place or some association of ideas must have influenced the proceedings of these animals; but to what faculty shall we attribute their swimming the river in a direct line with their old master's house, and then finding their way so immediately thither? And how shall we account for their thus acting in concert, if pigs are to be considered as the stupid obtuse brutes most persons are in the habit of designating them? Such instances of sagacity in the dog and the horse scarcely astonish us, because we allow to them a certain degree of reasoning power. But is not the great development of it in them as much arising from their intercourse, if such we may term it, with man?—from their being his companions, educated and ordered by him? "I have observed great sagacity in swine," observes Darwin, in his "Zoonomia," "but the short lives we allow them, and their general confinement, prevent their improvement, which would otherwise probably equal that of the dog."
"The Naturalist's Library" gives another anecdote of a hog which is indicative of no small degree of instinct or intelligence: "Early in the month, a pig that had been kept several days a close prisoner to his sty, was let out for the purpose of its being cleaned and his bed replenished. On opening the sty-door, he anticipated the purpose of his liberation by running to the stable, from which he carried several sheaves of straw to his sty, holding them in his mouth by the band. The straw being intended for another purpose, it was carried back to the stable; but the pig, seizing a more favorable opportunity, regained it, to the amazement of several persons, who were pleased to observe the extraordinary instinct of this wonderful pig.
Swine have also been repeatedly known to attach themselves to individuals, and to other animals, and to manifest great docility gentleness, and affection.
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