Page:The Hog.djvu/96

94. In Derbyshire, Cheshire, Lancashire, and some of the neighboring counties, smoked bacon is a rarity. However, the porky or the smoky flavor is a matter of taste.

Wiltshire is celebrated, and deservedly, for bacon, as Yorkshire for hams. The old Wiltshire hog was of large size, short-limbed, but heavily-boned, long in the body, but round and high on the croup. The ears, though large, were pointed. These animals were slow feeders, and great consumers of food; nevertheless, when at some cost they were fattened, they produced meat of excellent quality, especially fitted for converting into bacon. They were probably a mere variety of the Berkshire strain, and certainly possessed good qualities; but they are greatly improved, owing to the judicious crossings with the Chinese and Neapolitan stocks; and though, as might be anticipated, they are smaller in stature than formerly, they are finer-boned, more compact in contour, far quicker fatteners, and consequently ready for the butcher earlier. At the same time, the superior quality of the meat has suffered no decline, indeed quite the contrary. Wiltshire bacon commands a high price. The Hampshire are excellent hogs, generally black, and middle-sized, with rather a long snout, but compactly made; are a modification of the old large-sized Hampshire stock, individuals of which in former days were of huge magnitude, and some carried about for show. This colossal breed is now seldom to be seen, but it had its good points: when fattened (and time and much food were required to effect this) it returned by the way of payment a weighty carcase. As in all such cases, however, the question comes in, Was it profitable? Was the repayment for food and time in a just ratio? The answer must be, quick fattening, even with a smaller carcass, a gain of time and of provision being included, is one of the points in which the farmer finds himself the best remunerated. Slow feeders, however weighty their carcass at last, will not be found profitable when all expenses are calculated. The present Hampshire hog is compounded of the old race, and the Essex, the Chinese, and the Neapolitan, with an admixture also of the improved Berkshire.

A semi-wild breed of pigs are peculiar to the New Forest; they are termed Forest pigs, and differ materially from the ordinary stock cultivated by the Hampshire farmers. Though far inferior in size to the true wild hog, these animals exhibit much of the characteristics of that animal, and probably owe their origin to a cross between the wild hogs introduced into the forest by Charles I., and some of the ordinary breeds of his period. These animals are heavy in the fore quarters, but light and meagre behind; the withers are high, the ears short, the mane thick and bristly, the color black or brindled; the disposition is fierce and distrustful, and they display extraordinary activity and acuteness. The troops are headed by