A fixed determination to have its own way dominated the
creature then, and a pig-headed desire to be the greatest food-producing
machine in the world is its ruling passion now. That the hog has
succeeded in this is beyond question; for no other food animal can
increase its own weight one hundred and fifty fold in the first eight
months of its life.
All over the world there is a growing fondness for swine flesh, and the
ever increasing supply doesn't outrun the demand. Since the dispersion
of the tribes of Israel there has been no persistent effort to
depopularize this wonderful food maker. Pig has more often been the food
of the poor than of the rich, but now rich and poor alike do it honor.
Old Ben Jonson said:--
"Now pig is meat, and a meat that is nourishing and may be desired, and
consequently eaten: it may be eaten; yea, very exceedingly well eaten."
Hundreds have praised the rasher of ham, and thousands the flitch of
bacon; it took the stroke of but one pen to make roast pig classical.
The pig of to-day is so unlike his distant progenitor that he would not
be recognized; if by any chance he were recognized, it would be only
with a grunt of scorn for his unwieldy shape and his unenterprising
spirit.
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