inbred, and is not so hardy and prolific as most breeds. The boars cross well with common stock. It merits the most credit in raising the quality of Irish pigs. In America it is in the front rank for numbers and quality as a lard-hog. There it often grows to be a larger and finer animal than it is in England.
The Small Black or Black Suffolk was produced from the old Essex pig by crossing with the Neapolitan. It resembles the Small White, except that the skin is coal-black in colour, and the coat of hair is not usually profuse. The Small Black, moreover, is rather longer, and stands somewhat higher, whilst it yields more lean meat than the Small White. It matures early and is quick to fatten.
The Tamworth is one of the oldest breeds of pigs. It is hardy, active and prolific, and nearly related to the wild boar. The colour is red or chestnut, with at times darkish spots on the skin. The head, body and legs are long, and the ribs deep and flat. Originally a local breed in the districts around the Staffordshire town from which it takes its name, it is now extensively bred, and highly valued as a bacon pig. (W. Fr.; R. W.)
In America nearly all the breeds may be classified as lard-hogs. Bacon-pigs fed on Indian corn degenerate into lard-hogs, run down in size and become too small in the bone and less prolific by inbreeding.
The Poland-China, the most popular breed in the United States, is thus degenerating. It is a black pig like the Berkshire, but has short lop-ears, a more pointed, straight nose, a more compact body, and more white markings. It is a breed of mixed blood, and is believed to have originated from the “Big China” pig—a large white hog with sandy spots, taken to Ohio in 1816, and blended with Irish graziers in 1839, and with a breed known as Bayfields, as well as with Berkshires. In Iowa the Berkshire is a combined lard and bacon pig in high favor.
The Duroc Jersey or Duroc, of a red or cherry-red color—not sandy or dark—is the most popular pig in Nebraska and equal to any other in Iowa. It is a large prolific lard-hog, easily making 300 ℔ in eight months. It has gained rapidly in popularity since the beginning of this century, and is spreading to other centres.
The Chester White, named from Chester county, Pennsylvania, is one of the four leading breeds of lard-hogs in America. It is of mixed origin and bears a strong family resemblance to the Lincolnshire curly-coated pig. The early English ancestors, the breed of which is not on record in America, were most probably of Lincoln origin. The sow is a prolific breeder and good mother, weighing, when mature but not fat, 450 ℔—the boar averaging 600 ℔, and barrows at six to eight months 350 ℔. At Vermont Station, in a 127 days test, Chester Whites made an average gain of 1.36 ℔ and dressed 84.5% carcase, and they can gain fully 1 ℔ of live weight for 3 ℔ of grain consumed.
Management.—The brood sow should be lengthy and of a prolific strain, known to milk well. She is moderately fed and put to a boar of her own age when large enough, i.e. seven to eight months old. She remains in a state of oestrum for about three days, and if not pregnant comes in heat again in three weeks. Breeding swine, male and female, run most of their time at pasture and receive a liberal allowance of green food or raw roots. The period of gestation is sixteen weeks. Six to eight pigs are reared of the first litter, and ten to twelve afterwards. Many brood sows are fattened to greatest profit after the second or third litter. Two litters are produced in one year, as pigs are usually weaned at two months old, and the sow will take the boar at from three days to a week after the pigs are removed, according to condition. A convenient sty to hold five or six pigs has a southern aspect, and consists of a covered compartment and outer court, each 10 ft. square. When the animals are fed outside the inner court is kept clean and dry, and there the pigs be. The labouring man's pig is his bank, and is fed on scraps, small potatoes and waste products. In connexion with cheese dairies pigs are largely fed on sour whey thickened with mixed meal produced from any or all of the grains or pulses, the choice depending upon the market price. Food may with advantage be cooked or very young pigs; but, with the exception of potatoes, which should never be given raw, roots and meals are best given uncooked. Meal mixed with pulped roots for a few hours improves in digestibility, and a sprinkling of salt is an improvement. Meal derived from leguminous seeds makes the flesh firm and improves the quality. Fattening pigs are fed three times a day and supplied with coal-ashes or a few handfuls of earth. Of the fatted live weight of a pig 83% is butcher's carcase, and 91% of the increase from 100 to 200 ℔ is carcase. From 3 to 5 ℔ of meal consumed results in an increase of 1 ℔ of live weight in a pig, which is the most economical meat producer on a farm. Concentrated and digestible foods give best results, a pig has a small stomach. Fjord's Danish experiments show that or fattening pigs 1 ℔ of rye- or barley-meal is equivalent to 6 ℔ of skim-milk or 12 ℔ of whey, and 1 ℔ of meal equivalent to 8 ℔ of mangolds or 4 ℔ of potatoes.
Literature.—J. Coleman, Pigs of Great Britain (1877): Sanders Spencer, Pigs Breeds and Management (1905); G. M. Rommel, The Hog Industry (1904; Bull. No. 47, U.S.A. Bureau of Animal Industry); J. Long, The Book of the Pig (1906); F. D. Coburn, Swine Husbandry (1904); R. Wallace, Farm Live Stock of Great Britain (4th ed., 1907); Douglas Encyclopaedia (1906); C. S. Plumb, Types and Breeds of Farm Animals (1906), the Herd Books of the Breed Societies, and Reports of the Agricultural Departments of Great Britain, Canada and the United States. (R. W.)
PIGALLE, JEAN BAPTISTE (1714–1785), French sculptor, was born in Paris on the 26th of January 1714. He was the seventh child of a carpenter. Although he failed to obtain the grand prix, after a severe struggle he entered the Academy and became one of the most popular sculptors of his day. His earlier work, such as “Child with Cage” (model at Sèvres) and “Mercury Fastening his Sandals” (Berlin, and lead cast in Louvre), is less commonplace than that of his maturer years, but his nude statue of Voltaire, dated 1776 (Institut), and his tombs of Comte d'Harcourt (c. 1764) (Notre Dame) and of Marshal Saxe, completed in 1777 (Lutheran church, Strassburg), are good specimens of French sculpture in the 18th century. He died on the 28th of August 1785.
See P. Tarbé, Vie et œuv de Pigalle (1859); Suard, Éloge de Pigalle, Mélanges de littérature.
PIGAULT-LEBRUN (Pigault de L'Epinoy), CHARLES ANTOINE GUILLAUME (1753-1835), French novelist, was born at Calais (he is said to have traced his pedigree on the mother's side to Eustache de St Pierre) on the 8th of April 1753. His youth was stormy. He twice carried off young ladies of some position, and was in consequence twice imprisoned by lettre de cachet. The first, a Miss Crawford, the daughter of an English merchant whose office Pigault had entered, died almost immediately after her elopement; the second, Mlle de Salens, he married. He became a soldier in the Queen's Guards, then a very unsuccessful actor, and a teacher of French. At the breaking out of the great war he re-enlisted and fought at Valmy. He wrote more than twenty plays, and a large number of novels, the first of which appeared in 1787. In his old age he took to graver work, and executed an abridgement of French history in eight volumes, besides some other work. His Œuvres complètes were published in twenty volumes between 1822 and 1824, but much of his work is subsequent to this collection. He died on the 24th of July 1835. The style of Pigault's novels is insignificant, and their morality very far from severe. As almost the father of a kind of literature which later developed enormously, Pigault-Lebrun deserves a certain place in literary history. Among the most celebrated of his novels may be mentioned L'Enfant du Carnaval (1792) and Angelique et Jeanneton de la place Manbert (1799). His Citateur (2 vols., 1803), a collection of quotations against Christianity, was forbidden and yet several times reprinted.
PIGEON (Fr. pigeon, Ital. piccione and pipione, Lat. pipio, literally a nestling-bird that pipes or cries out, a “piper”—the very name now in use among some pigeon-fanciers, though “squeaker” in the more usual term). The name pigeon, doubtless of Norman introduction as a polite term, seems to bear much the same relation to dove, the word of Anglo-Saxon origin, that mutton has to sheep, beef to ox, veal to calf, and pork to bacon; no sharp zoological distinction can be drawn (see Dove) between dove and pigeon, and the collective members of the group Columbae are by ornithologists ordinarily called pigeons. Perhaps the best-known species to which the latter name is exclusively given in common speech[1] is the wild pigeon
- ↑ It may be observed that the “rock-pigeons” of Anglo-Indians are Sand-grouse (q.v.), and the “Cape pigeon” of sailors is a petrel (q.v.)
