Page:Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.djvu/703

Rh in the head and shoulders and in the length and quality of carcass. The fat pigs sell readily amongst the miners in Cornwall, but it is doubtful if the consumers in the eastern midlands and London will purchase pork very freely which is made from the present fashionable type of Large Black.

The Blue-Black pig found in Sussex has many good qualities; it is a good forager, is easily kept, is prolific and hardy, and the pigs give a good return for the fatting food when they have become matured, which is at rather a late period of their lives. This want of early maturity may have been one of the causes for the crossing of the Sussex sows with the Berkshire or Dorset boar. The cross bred pigs by the Berkshire are said to fatten more readily and to produce somewhat better quality of pork; this may or may not be correct, but the cross bred pigs are certainly of a more pleasing appearance and carriage.

The Dorset was also of a slate colour and, like the Sussex, sparse of hair, but very few, if any, pure bred specimens of the breed can now be found; the breed was very considerably utilized for competition at the fat stock shows held in London and other places some thirty years since. It is asserted that the exhibitors crossed their Dorset sows with the Small Black boar, in order to increase the ability to fatten readily. In this the breeders were very successful; some of the so-called Dorsets exhibited at the Smithfield Club's shows were certainly marvels of obesity, but the carcasses proved to be mere bladders of lard, which lost their high value when the enormous quantity of American Lard, manufactured from maize and cotton-seed oil, was imported into this country.

The so-called Oxfordshire or plum pudding pig, found in parts of Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire is nearly lost at the present time. The use of Neapolitan and other boars of a black breed has well nigh converted this local breed into one of a black or a black with a little white colour. Sows of this character have many good points; their ability to rough it and to withstand the far too general neglect with which the midland counties farmers' pigs are treated, renders it a favourite. The sows are good mothers and the store pigs grow fairly fast, and when put up to fatten make fair use of the good food fed to them; the fat pigs also furnish a large proportion of lean meat, which however has cost rather a high price to produce.

The Cumberland or North County pig was a prime favourite for supplying the well-known and much appreciated Cumberland hams in the days of old-fashioned curing, and when large hams were not objected to as they now are. The pig itself was of considerable size, but not as bulky as the Large Yorkshire; its bone was fine, its skin was thin and hair sparse, and its flesh was inclined to be fat, too fat for the present taste; but the Cumberland hog is still another of the local breeds which has almost ceased to exist in its old form. It has