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CHAPTER XIV.

Pigs, Profit of, to the Butcher—Sucking-pigs—Pork-butchers—Pig-killing at Rome—Pickling Pork—Bacon: Mode of Curing in Hampshire—Buckinghamshire—Witshire—Yorkshire—Westphalia—America—Brine a Poison for Pigs—Quantity of Bacon, Ham, and Salt Pork imported during the last Three Years—Importation of Swine—Pigs' Dung as Manure.

There is perhaps no animal so entirely profitable to the butcher as the pig. Scarcely an atom of it but is useful. The offal is so small as not to be thought of in comparison with that arising from cattle and sheep. The feet, the head, and even portions of the intestines are saleable for food and eagerly purchased by epicures; the scraps and trimmings of the meat make delicious sausages, pork pies, and other such savory dishes; brawn, too, is another of the delicacies we owe to the much despised pig; the fat, or lard, is invaluable to cooks, confectioners, perfumers, and apothecaries; pigs' bladders meet a ready sale; the skin is available for pocket-books and several purposes; and the bristles form by no means an inconsiderable item in the tables of imports and exports, and are used by shoemakers, as well as in the manufacture of brushes, &c. Lastly, the flesh in the form of fresh or pickled pork, ham, and bacon, constitutes the chief food of thousands of human beings in all parts of the globe.

In France, from one-half to two-thirds of the meat consumed by the poorer and middling classes of the provinces is pork. In Ireland, the peasantry and many of the middle-men scarcely know the taste of any other kind of meat. In most of our Channel Islands pork constitutes the staple animal food of the laboring classes and small farmers; and in America, and especially among the new settlements and back-woods, it is often the only animal food for the first few years of the settler's life.

 

SUCKING-PIGS.

In our own country, "sucking-pigs" too are in great esteem, and will, at their season, fetch a very high price. Charles Lamb, in one of his inimitable "Essays of Elia," declares, "Of all the delicacies of the whole mundus edibilis, I will maintain this to be the most delicate.

"I speak not of your grown porkers—things between pig and pork—these hobbydehoys; but a young and tender suckling, under a moon old, guiltless as yet of the sty; with no original speck of the amor immunditiæ, the hereditary failing of the first parent, as yet manifest; his voice as yet not broken, but something between a childish treble and a grumble, the mild forerunner or præludium of a grunt.