Page:The Hog.djvu/16

14 flesh is similar to ordinary pork, but harder, less sweet and juicy and not so fat.

The peccary may be tamed if taken when young, and will attach itself to those who are kind to it, and to dogs and other animals; is fond of being caressed and scratched, and will answer to its keeper's voice.

The European hog, when transplanted to the wilds of America, will herd with the peccaries, but is never known to breed with them; the two races, although resembling each other in certain points, are, and remain distinct. The hog is the larger, stronger, and more useful animal, and will thrive in almost any part of the world: the peccary is smaller, weaker, and cannot be made to live in a foreign climate without very great care and attention.

The, (sus baby-roussa,) or Hog-deer, or, as it has been termed by some foreign authors, the Indian hog, is chiefly found in the Moluccas, Sumatra, Java, and other islands of the Indian Archipelago.

This animal stands higher than the common hog; its legs are long and slender; its skin thin and scantily furnished with short woolly hair of a reddish brown on the back, and lighter and more inclined to fawn-color on the belly. It is chiefly remarkable for the strange position of its upper tusks, which come through the skin of the muzzle and curve backwards almost like horns, until they nearly or quite touch the skin again; they are sometimes as much as nine inches in length and five in circumference. Pliny (b. 8, chap, lii.) evidently alludes to this animal when he says that wild boars are found in India which have two horns on the face, similar to those of a heifer, and tusks like the common wild boars.

There are all the family characteristics of the hog in this animal; the heavy awkward gait, thick neck, small eyes, head terminated by a snout, and grunting voice; it feeds, too, on roots, plants, and leaves, and some say shell-fish; but some authors assert that it does not grub roots out of the ground like most of the swinish varieties. Sparrman informs us that the natives would rather attack a lion than this animal, for it comes rushing on a man swift as an arrow, and, throwing him down, snaps his legs in two and rips his belly up in a moment. (Voyage, vol ii.)

The flesh of the babiroussa is very fine eating, and the Malays melt down the fat to use instead of butter and oil.

Cuvier has given an account of a pair that were at the Menagerie at Paris, the female of which was much younger and more active than the male; he was old and fat, and only ate, drank, and slept. When the male retired to rest, the female would cover him completely over with straw or litter, and creep in after him, so that both were concealed from sight. The specimen at the Zoological Gardens in the Regent's Park used to cover himself up with straw in the same way.