Page:The Hog.djvu/29

27 sacrifice swine to any other deities than to Bacchus and to the moon, when completely at full, at, which time they may eat of the flesh. When they offer this sacrifice to the moon, and have killed the victim, they put the end of the tail, with the spleen and fat, into a caul found in the belly of the animal, all which they burn on the sacred fire, and eat the rest of the flesh on the day of the full moon, though at any other time they would not taste it. Those who, on account of their poverty, cannot bear the expense of this sacrifice, mould a paste into the form of a hog, and make their offering. In the evening of the festival of Bacchus, though every one be obliged to kill a swine before the door of his house, yet he immediately restores the carcass to the swineherd who sold it."

This aversion towards the hog, among the ancient Egyptians and the Jews, (we need not here notice the Mohammedans or the Brahminical tribes of India,) is very remarkable. Among the Greeks and Romans the flesh of the swine was held in estimation, although the swineherd attracted little notice from the poet. Why, then, in Western Asia and Egypt should it have been forbidden? We attribute it entirely to mystical or religious motives, which we are not quite able to appreciate.

The following passage from Griffith's Cuvier is worthy our consideration, although it does not bring conviction to our mind; it is rather plausible than demonstrative:—"In hot climates the flesh of swine is not good. M. Sonnini remarks, that in Egypt, Syria, and even the southern parts of Greece, this meat, though very white and delicate, is so far from being firm, and is so overcharged with fat. that it disagrees with the strongest stomachs. It is therefore considered unwholesome, and this will account for its proscription by the legislators and priests of the East. Such an abstinence was doubtless indispensable to health, under the burning suns of Egypt and Arabia. The Egyptians were permitted to eat pork only once a year—on the feast day of the moon—and then they sacrificed a number of these animals to that planet. At other times, if any one even touched a hog, he was obliged immediately to plunge into the river Nile, with his clothes on, by way of purification. The swineherds formed an isolated class, the outcasts of society. They were interdicted from entering the temples, or intermarrying with any other families. This aversion for swine has been transmitted to the modern Egyptians. The Copts rear no pigs, any more than do the followers of Mohammed. The Jews, who borrowed from the Egyptians their horror of pigs, as well as many other peculiarities, continue their abstinence from them in colder climates, where they form one of the most useful articles of subsistence."

If the hog in warm climates is so unwholesome as food, how happens it that the Chinese rear this animal in such numbers for the table? and how happens it that the hare (if indeed this animal be