or, perhaps, rather did. Formerly, hogs of the pure breed were often found to weigh from 800 to 960 lbs.; and it is recorded that one bred at Petworth, in Sussex, measured 7 feet 7 inches from the tip of the snout to the root of the tail, 7 feet 10 inches in girth round the centre, 5 feet round the neck, and 2 feet across the span of the back. Height 3 feet 9 inches. It was remarkable that this huge animal was a moderate consumer of food; his allowance being about two bushels and three pecks of ground oats, peas, and barley, per week.
The present Berkshire breed are moderate-sized beasts, roundly made, short in the limb, and with a short arched neck, with heavy cheeks, sharp ears, an abruptly-rising forehead, short in the snout, well-barrelled, broad-backed, and clean in the limbs; some are sandy-colored or whitish, spotted with black, but most are either white or black, or half white and half black, a coloring indicative of a mixture of the Neapolitan and the Chinese, as well as of the Suffolk strain.
We believe that rather small (not too small) and quickly fattening breeds are, from first to last, the most profitable; indisputably they afford the best meat, in whatever way it is prepared.
The new breeds now to be seen in Berkshire are but thinly clothed, and are said to be somewhat tender, a circumstance in that sunny county of little consequence, for the farmer's straw-yard supplies abundant shelter and comfort.
Around Henley in Oxfordsire, on the banks of the Thames, and about Dorking in Surrey, cross breeds of the Berkshire strain prevail; although in the latter county the improved Essex breed is held in great estimation.
There are few counties in England into which the Berkshire breed of pigs has not penetrated; it is everywhere valued for its excellent qualities, its fair, moderate size, its small bones, its thin skin, its fattening qualities, and excellence of its flesh. First-rate hogs of this breed have been reared in distant counties. Through Middlesex, Hartfordshire, Bedfordshire, and Leicestershire, the Berkshire breed has extended itself, modifying the old races, not without other crossings; indeed, it must be confessed that the modern system of interbreeding renders it difficult to tell the original stock on which the grafts have been made; or rather, what strain shows itself the most prominently.
In Berkshire it is the general custom to singe the hogs after being killed, and not to remove the bristles by means of hot water and scraping; nor do they as a rule smoke the flitches after salting, but merely dry them. The same remark applies more or less to the adjacent counties; for example, the bacon sold in Henley is unsmoked. In fact, the taste for smoked bacon and hams seems to a certain degree to be confined to London, as far as England is con-
