Part 46

Travellers in South Africa have made us familiar with the habits, and specimens in the Zoological Gardens, in a pannage close to that of the "painted pig," show us the form and ugliness, of the bush pig and flat pig (Choiropotamus Africanus) of that southern land, with their long heads, long legs, upturned tails, and horrid tusks. They have a strange habit of kneeling on their fore-legs. In South Africa they abound; and the natives--our excellent friend, the Rev. Henry Methuen, tells us--often bring their jaws for barter. They are of a dingy, dirty gray; the boar is two feet and a half high, and his tusks sometimes measure "eleven inches and a half each from the jawbone," are five inches and a half in circumference at the base, and are thirteen inches apart at their extremities.

No animal is more formidably armed; and his rapidity and lightness of movement make him a very marked object to the African Nimrod, who, midst "clumps of bush"--be they Proteacæ, heaths, or Diosmeæ--not unfrequently comes on a herd of wild pigs "headed by a noble boar," with tail erect. We could enter largely on the history of this active species, and quote many a stirring anecdote of travellers' rencontres with this fearless animal. The lion skulks away from him, but the rhinoceros--at least one species--the buffalo, with his formidable front of horn and bone, and the bush pig, with his dreaded tusks, show but little fear; and it is well for the huntsman that he has a sure eye, a steady hand, and a double-barrelled gun, and not a few Caffir followers to help him, should his eye be dim, his hand waver, or his gun "flash in the pan." Dogs avail but little; a deadly gash lays open their ribs, and a side-thrust of a wild boar will cut into the most muscular leg, and for ever destroy its tendons. We have done with pigs, and would only recommend a visit--a frequent visit--to that paradise of animals, the Zoological Gardens, where, a fortnight ago, we saw wild boars from Hesse Darmstadt; wild boars from Egypt; bush pigs from Africa; peccaries from South America; and two painted pigs from West Africa; all "de grege porci," and in excellent health: to say nothing of two hippopotamuses; four "seraphic" giraffes; antelopes (we did not number them); brush turkeys from Australia; an apteryx from New Zealand; the curious white sheathbills from the South Seas; the refulgent metallic green and purple-tinted monaul, or Impeyan pheasant, strutting with outspread, light-coloured tail, just as he courts his plain hen-mate on the Indian mountains; a family of the funny pelicans--cleanliness, ugliness, and contentment in one happy combination; a band of flamingoes; eagles and vultures; the harpy--that Picton of the birds--looking defiance as he stands, with upraised crest, flashing eye, and clenched talons, over his food; the wily otter; the amiable seal, which carries us to the seas and rocks of much-loved Shetland, with their long, winding voes, their bird-frequented cliffs, and outlying skerries; the Indian thrush, which reminds one of a "mavis" at home; the parrot-house, with its fine contrasts of colour and its discordant noises; Penny's Esquimaux dog--poor fellow, a prisoner, unlike to what he was when, with our dear friends Dr Sutherland and Captain Stewart, this very dog breasted the blast before a sledge in the Wellington Channel. Look at that wondrous sloth, organised for a life in a Brazilian forest--those two restless Polar bears; and though last, not least, those wonders of the great deep, "the sea-anemones," the exquisite red and white "feathery" tentacles of the long cylindrical-twisted serpulæ, and marvellously-transparent streaked shrimps, all leg, and feeler, and eye, and "nose"--in the salt-water tanks in the Vivarium.--A. White, in "Excelsior."

S. BISSET AND HIS LEARNED PIG.

S. Bisset, formerly referred to, when at Belfast bought a black sucking pig, and after several experiments succeeded in training a creature, so obstinate and perverse by nature, to become most tractable and docile. In August 1783, he took his learned pig to Dublin for exhibition. "It was not only under full command, but appeared as pliant and good-natured as a spaniel. He had taught it to spell the names of any one in the company, to tell the hour, minute, and second, to make his obeisance to the company, and he occasioned many a laugh by his pointing out the married and the unmarried. Some one in authority forced him to leave Dublin, and he died broken-hearted shortly after at Chester, on his way to London, where forty and more years before he had first been induced to train animals."

QUIXOTE BOWLES FOND OF PIGS.

Southey records of Quixote Bowles that he "had a great love for pigs; he thought them the happiest of all God's creatures, and would walk twenty miles to see one that was remarkably fat. This love extended to bacon; he was an epicure in it; and whenever he went out to dinner, took a piece of his own curing in his pocket, and requested the cook to dress it."

ON JEKYLL NEARLY THROWN DOWN BY A VERY SMALL PIG.

"As Jekyll walk'd out in his gown and his wig, He happen'd to tread on a very small pig; 'Pig of science,' he said, 'or else I'm mistaken, For surely thou art an abridgment of Bacon.'"

GOOD ENOUGH FOR A PIG.

An Irish peasant being asked why he permitted his pig to take up its quarters with his family, made an answer abounding with satirical naïveté. "Why not? Doesn't the place afford every convenience that a pig can require?"

Mrs Fry, in 1827, visited Ireland on one of her Christian and philanthropic tours. In a letter to her children from Armagh she says--"Pigs abound; I think they have rather a more elegant appearance than ours, their hair often rather curled. Perhaps naturalists may attribute this to their intimate association with their betters!"

THE COUNTRYMAN'S CRITICISM ON THE PIGS IN GAINSBOROUGH'S PICTURE OF THE GIRL AND PIGS.

Thomas Gainsborough, the great English painter, exhibited, in 1782, among pictures of noblemen, gentlemen, and ladies, his well-known "Girl and Pigs."

Wolcot, better known as "Peter Pindar," in his first "Ode to the Royal Academicians," refers to this picture.

"And now, O Muse, with song so big, Turn round to Gainsborough's Girl and Pig, Or Pig and Girl, I rather should have said; The pig in white, I must allow, Is really a well painted sow, I wish to say the same thing of the maid."

"The expression and truth of nature in the Girl and Pigs," remarks Northcote, "were never surpassed. Sir Joshua Reynolds was struck with it, though he thought Gainsborough ought to have made her a beauty." Reynolds, indeed, became the purchaser of the painting at one hundred guineas, Gainsborough asking but sixty. During its exhibition, it is said to have attracted the attention of a countryman, who remarked--"They be deadly like pigs, but nobody ever saw pigs feeding together but what one on 'em had a foot in the trough."

HOOK AND THE LITTER OF PIGS.

Once a gentleman, who had the marvellous gift of shaping a great many things out of orange-peel, was displaying his abilities at a dinner-party before Theodore Hook and Mr Thomas Hill, and succeeded in counterfeiting a pig. Mr Hill tried the same feat; and after destroying and strewing the table with the peel of a dozen oranges, gave it up, with the exclamation, "Hang the pig! I can't make him." "Nay, Hill," exclaimed Hook, glancing at the mess on the table, "you have done more; instead of one pig, you have made a litter."

Hook, we may add, was an original wit. He did not, like most professed wits, study his sayings before, and arrange with his seeming opponent for an imaginary war of words. He was an impromptu wit.

JESTS ABOUT SWINE.

Lord Chancellor Hardwicke's bailiff, having been ordered by his lady to procure a sow of a particular description, came one day into the dining-room when full of company, proclaiming with a burst of joy he could not suppress--"I have been at Royston Fair, my lady, and I have got a sow exactly of your ladyship's size."

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John was thought to be very stupid. He was sent to a mill one day, and the miller said--"John, some people say you are a fool! Now, tell me, what you do know, and what you don't know."--"Well," replied John, "I know millers' hogs are fat!"--"Yes, that's well, John; now, what don't you know?"--"I don't know whose corn fats 'em."

PIGS AND SILVER SPOON.

The Earl of P---- kept a number of swine at his seat in Wiltshire, and crossing the yard one day, he was surprised to see the pigs gathered round one trough, and making a great noise. Curiosity prompted him to see what was the cause, and on looking into the trough he perceived a large silver spoon. A servant-maid came out, and began to abuse the pigs for crying so. "Well they may," said his lordship, "when they have got but one silver spoon among them all."

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We have heard of one nobleman in Strathearn, who, when a young man, used to be thus addressed by his mother--"William! how are the children and your pigs?"

SYDNEY SMITH ON BEAUTIFUL PIGS.