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153 so doing, of the aim in view. The Chinese and Siamese pigs will generally be found to be the best which can be used for this purpose, as a single, and even two crosses, with one of these animals, will seldom do harm, but often effect considerable improvement. The best formed of the progeny resulting from this cross must be selected as breeders, and with them the old original stock crossed back again.

"Selection, with judicious and cautious admixture, is the true secret of forming and improving the breed," says an old and well-established axiom; and so it is. Repeated and indiscriminate crosses are as injurious as an obstinate adherence to one particular breed, and as much to be avoided; and of this most persons seem to be fully aware, for a systematic alteration is extending itself throughout all our English breeds of swine; the large, heavy, coarse breeds are almost extinct, and a smaller race of animals—more apt to fatten, less expensive to keep, attaining earlier to maturity, and furnishing a far more delicious and delicate meat—have taken their place.

It would be useless to point out certain breeds as being the most profitable or advantageous, so much depends upon the object for which the animals are raised; and besides, each breeder of any experience has in general his own pet stock breed, frequently one that has been "made," if we may be allowed the expression, by himself or his progenitors. This will be found to be the case in all great pig-breeding localities, and it frequently happens that the actual stock from which some of the present choicest races of swine sprang cannot be traced farther back than some ancestor or ancestress celebrated for the number of prizes he or she, or their immediate descendants, have won. At least we have found this to be the case in almost every instance in which we have endeavored to arrive at a knowledge of the actual parent stock of some of the most perfect and valuable animals we have met with or heard of. The Berkshire, the Improved Essex, and the New Suffolk and Bedfordshire breeds may, however, with the Chinese and Neapolitan, be instanced as the best stocks from which to raise a small-boned, thriving, profitable race, adapted for almost every purpose.

A sow is capable of conceiving at the age of from seven to ten months, but it is always better not to let her commence breeding too early, as it tends to weaken her when she does. From ten to twelve months old will be about the best age. Thäer says, "Sows are almost always in heat until they have received the boar; this state commences even as early as at the age of four or five months, but they are usually a year old before they are allowed to be put to the boar."

The boar should be at least a twelvemonth old before he is employed for the purpose of propagating his species, and during that time should have been well and regularly fed and exercised. On