"The time has come", the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes — and ships — and sealing wax — Of cabbages — and Kings — And why the Sea is boiling hot — And whether pigs have wings."
A barren sow was never good to pigs.
Beside, 't is known he could speak Greek As naturally as pigs squeak; That Latin was no more difficile Than to a blackbird 't is to whistle.
Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.
"Don't discount flying pigs before you have good air defense."
Little pigs eat great potatoes.
I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
According to that hypothesis, two factors are at work, variation and selection. Next to nothing is known of the causes of the former process; nothing whatever of the time required for the production of a certain amount of deviation from the existing type. And, as respects selection, which operates by extinguishing all but a small minority of variations, we have not the slightest means of estimating the rapidity with which it does its work. All that we are justified in saying is that the rate at which it takes place may vary almost indefinitely. If the famous paint-root of Florida, which kills white pigs but not black ones, were abundant and certain in its action, black pigs might be substituted for white in the course of two or three years. If, on the other hand, it was rare and uncertain in action, the white pigs might linger on for centuries.
"Don't discount flying pigs before you have good air defense." -- jvh@clinet.FI
[I plan] to see, hear, touch, and destroy everything in my path, including beets, rutabagas, and most random vegetables, but excluding yams, as I am absolutely terrified of yams... Actually, I think my fear of yams began in my early youth, when many of my young comrades pelted me with same for singing songs of far-off lands and deep blue seas in a language closely resembling that of the common sow. My psychosis was further impressed into my soul as I reached adolescence, when, while skipping through a field of yams, light-heartedly tossing flowers into the stratosphere, a great yam-picking machine tore through the fields, pursuing me to the edge of the great plantation, where I escaped by diving into a great ditch filled with a mixture of water and pig manure, which may explain my tendency to scream, "Here come the Martians! Hide the eggs!" every time I have pork. But I digress. The fact remains that I cannot rationally deal with yams, and pigs are terrible conversationalists.
Something better... 13 (sympathetic): Oh, What happened? Did your parents lose a bet with God? 14 (complimentary): You must love the little birdies to give them this to perch on. 15 (scientific): Say, does that thing there influence the tides? 16 (obscure): Oh, I'd hate to see the grindstone. 17 (inquiry): When you stop to smell the flowers, are they afraid? 18 (french): Say, the pigs have refused to find any more truffles until you leave. 19 (pornographic): Finally, a man who can satisfy two women at once. 20 (religious): The Lord giveth and He just kept on giving, didn't He. 21 (disgusting): Say, who mows your nose hair? 22 (paranoid): Keep that guy away from my cocaine! 23 (aromatic): It must be wonderful to wake up in the morning and smell the coffee ... in Brazil. 24 (appreciative): Oooo, how original. Most people just have their teeth capped. 25 (dirty): Your name wouldn't be Dick, would it? -- Steve Martin, "Roxanne"
I was appalled by this story of the destruction of a member of a valued endangered species. It's all very well to celebrate the practicality of
bricks and mortar. But to wantonly destroy a wolf, even one with an
excessive taste for porkers, is unconscionable in these ecologically
critical times when both man and his domestic beasts continue to maraud
the earth.
Sylvia Kamerman, "Book Reviewing"
Here one of the guinea-pigs cheered, and was immediately suppressed by the officers of the court. (As that is rather a hard word, I will just explain to you how it was done. They had a large canvas bag, which tied up at the mouth with strings: into this they slipped the guinea-pig, head first, and then sat upon it.)
So she swallowed one of the cakes, and was delighted to find that she began shrinking directly. As soon as she was small enough to get through the door, she ran out of the house, and found quite a crowd of little animals and birds waiting outside. The poor little Lizard, Bill, was in the middle, being held up by two guinea-pigs, who were giving it something out of a bottle. They all made a rush at Alice the moment she appeared; but she ran off as hard as she could, and soon found herself safe in a thick wood.
All the streets and lanes was just mud; they warn't nothing else _but_ mudmud as black as tar and nigh about a foot deep in some places, and two or three inches deep in _all_ the places. The hogs loafed and grunted around everywheres. You'd see a muddy sow and a litter of pigs come lazying along the street and whollop herself right down in the way, where folks had to walk around her, and she'd stretch out and shut her eyes and wave her ears whilst the pigs was milking her, and look as happy as if she was on salary. And pretty soon you'd hear a loafer sing out, "Hi! _so_ boy! sick him, Tige!" and away the sow would go, squealing most horrible, with a dog or two swinging to each ear, and three or four dozen more a-coming; and then you would see all the loafers get up and watch the thing out of sight, and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise. Then they'd settle back again till there was a dog fight. There couldn't anything wake them up all over, and make them happy all over, like a dog fightunless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting fire to him, or tying a tin pan to his tail and see him run himself to death.
So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to see it trot away quietly into the wood. 'If it had grown up,' she said to herself, 'it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think.' And she began thinking over other children she knew, who might do very well as pigs, and was just saying to herself, 'if one only knew the right way to change them--' when she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off.
"And is this all?" cried Elizabeth. "I expected at least that the pigs were got into the garden, and here is nothing but Lady Catherine and her daughter."
The long grass rustled at her feet as the White Rabbit hurried by--the frightened Mouse splashed his way through the neighbouring pool--she could hear the rattle of the teacups as the March Hare and his friends shared their never-ending meal, and the shrill voice of the Queen ordering off her unfortunate guests to execution--once more the pig-baby was sneezing on the Duchess's knee, while plates and dishes crashed around it--once more the shriek of the Gryphon, the squeaking of the Lizard's slate-pencil, and the choking of the suppressed guinea-pigs, filled the air, mixed up with the distant sobs of the miserable Mock Turtle.
France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.
As to our City of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose, in the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we may be assured will not be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs.
Tired, bloody, triumphant, the sailors and workers swarmed into the switchboard room, and finding so many pretty girls, fell back in an embarrassed way and fumbled with awkward feet. Not a girl was injured, not one insulted. Frightened, they huddled in the corners, and then, finding themselves safe, gave vent to their spite. “Ugh! The dirty, ignorant people! The fools!”... The sailors and Red Guards were embarrassed. “Brutes! Pigs!” shrilled the girls, indignantly putting on their coats and hats. Romantic had been their experience passing up cartridges and dressing the wounds of their dashing young defenders, the _yunkers,_ many of them members of noble families, fighting to restore their beloved Tsar! These were just common workmen, peasants, “Dark People.”...
All night there were coaches in my broken sleep, going to wrong places instead of to London, and having in the traces, now dogs, now cats, now pigs, now men,--never horses. Fantastic failures of journeys occupied me until the day dawned and the birds were singing. Then, I got up and partly dressed, and sat at the window to take a last look out, and in taking it fell asleep.
Many other advantages might be enumerated. For instance, the addition of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barrel'd beef: the propagation of swine's flesh, and improvement in the art of making good bacon, so much wanted among us by the great destruction of pigs, too frequent at our tables; which are no way comparable in taste or magnificence to a well grown, fat yearly child, which roasted whole will make a considerable figure at a Lord Mayor's feast, or any other publick entertainment. But this, and many others, I omit, being studious of brevity.
'Come, that finished the guinea-pigs!' thought Alice. 'Now we shall get on better.'
To be sure, it was a deserted place, down to the pigeon-house in the brewery-yard, which had been blown crooked on its pole by some high wind, and would have made the pigeons think themselves at sea, if there had been any pigeons there to be rocked by it. But there were no pigeons in the dove-cot, no horses in the stable, no pigs in the sty, no malt in the storehouse, no smells of grains and beer in the copper or the vat. All the uses and scents of the brewery might have evaporated with its last reek of smoke. In a by-yard, there was a wilderness of empty casks, which had a certain sour remembrance of better days lingering about them; but it was too sour to be accepted as a sample of the beer that was gone,--and in this respect I remember those recluses as being like most others.
The island reaches its greatest elevation (nearly 500 ft.) in the north, the land rising sharply from the north coast, and displaying bold and picturesque cliffs towards the sea. The east, south and west coasts consist of a succession of large open bays, shallow and rocky, with marshy or sandy shores separated by rocky headlands. The principal bays are Grève au Lançons, Grève de Lecq, St John's and Bouley Bays on the north coast; St Catherine's and Grouville Bays on the east; St Clement's, St Aubin's and St Brelade's Bays on the south; and St Ouen's Bay, the wide sweep of which occupies nearly the whole of the west coast. The sea in many places has encroached greatly on the land, and sand drifts have been found troublesome, especially on the west coast. The surface of the country is broken by winding valleys having a general direction from north to south, and as they approach the south uniting so as to form small plains. The lofty hedges which bound the small enclosures into which Jersey is divided, the trees and shrubberies which line the roads and cluster round the uplands and in almost every nook of the valleys unutilized for pasturage or tillage, give the island a luxuriant appearance, neutralizing the bare effect of the few sandy plains and sand-covered hills. Fruits and flowers indigenous to warm climates grow freely in the open air. The land, under careful cultivation, is rich and productive, the soil being generally a deep loam, especially in the valleys, but in the west shallow, light and sandy. The subsoil is usually gravel, but in some parts an unfertile clay. Some two-thirds of the total area is under cultivation, great numbers of cattle being pastured, and much market gardening practised. The potato crop is very large. The peasants take advantage of every bit of wall and every isolated nook of ground for growing fruit trees. Grapes are ripened under glass; oranges can be grown in sheltered situations, but the most common fruits are apples, which are used for cider, and pears. A manure of burnt sea-weed (vraic) is generally used. The pasturage is very rich, and is much improved by the application of this manure to the surface. The breed of cattle is kept pure by stringent laws against the importation of foreign animals. The milk is used almost exclusively to manufacture butter. The cattle are always housed in winter, but remain out at night from May till October. There was formerly a small black breed of horses peculiar to the island, but horses are now chiefly imported from France or England. Pigs are kept principally for local consumption, and only a few sheep are reared. Fish are not so plentiful as round the shores of Guernsey, but mackerel, turbot, cod, mullet and especially the conger eel are abundant at the Minquiers. There is a large oyster bed between Jersey and France, but partly on account of over-dredging the supply is not so abundant as formerly. There is a great variety of other shell fish. The fisheries, ship-building and boat-building employ many of the inhabitants. Kelp and iodine are manufactured from sea-weed. The principal exports are granite, fruit and vegetables (especially potatoes), butter and cattle; and the chief imports coal and articles of human consumption. Communications with England are maintained principally from Southampton and Weymouth, and there are regular steamship services from Granville and St Malo on the French coast. The Jersey railway runs west from St Helier round St Aubin's Bay to St Aubin, and continues to Corbière at the south-western extremity of the island; and the Jersey eastern railway follows the southern and eastern coasts to Gorey. The island is intersected with a network of good roads. Entry: JERSEY
Hautes-Pyrénées is agricultural in the plains, pastoral in the highlands. The more important cereals are wheat and maize, which is much used for the feeding of pigs and poultry, especially geese; rye, oats and barley are grown in the mountain districts. The wines of Madiran and Peyriguère are well known and tobacco is also cultivated; chestnut trees and fruit trees are grown on the lower slopes. In the neighbourhood of Tarbes and Bagnères-de-Bigorre horse-breeding is the principal occupation and there is a famous stud at Tarbes. The horse of the region is the result of a fusion of Arab, English and Navarrese blood and is well fitted for saddle and harness; it is largely used by light cavalry regiments. Cattle raising is important; the milch-cows of Lourdes and the oxen of Tarbes and the valley of the Aure are highly esteemed. Sheep and goats are also reared. The forests, which occur chiefly in the highlands, contain bears, boars, wolves and other wild animals. There are at Campan and Sarrancolin quarries of fine marble, which is sawn and worked at Bagnères. There is a group of slate quarries at Labassère. Deposits of lignite, lead, manganese and zinc are found. The mineral springs of Hautes-Pyrénées are numerous and much visited. The principal in the valley of the Gave de Pau are Cauterets (hot springs containing sulphur and sodium), St Sauveur (springs with sulphur and sodium), and Barèges (hot springs with sulphur and sodium), and in the valley of the Adour Bagnères (hot or cold springs containing calcium sulphates, iron, sulphur and sodium) and Capvern near Lannemezan (springs containing calcium sulphates). Entry: HAUTES
In Central Java we meet with another kind of wer-tiger. The power of transformation is regarded as due to inheritance, to the use of spells, to fasting and will-power, to the use of charms, &c. Save when it is hungry or has just cause for revenge it is not hostile to man; in fact, it is said to take its animal form only at night and to guard the plantations from wild pigs, exactly as the _balams_ (magicians) of Yucatan were said to guard the corn fields in animal form. Variants of this belief assert that the werman does not recognize his friends unless they call him by name, or that he goes out as a mendicant and transforms himself to take vengeance on those who refuse him alms. Somewhat similar is the belief of the Khonds; for them the tiger is friendly; he reserves his wrath for their enemies, and a man is said to take the form of a tiger in order to wreak a just vengeance. Entry: I
_Industries._--The soil of the northern portion of the county is a rich brown loam, on a substratum of clay or gravel. Towards Charlemont there is much reclaimable bog resting on a limestone substratum. The eastern portion of the county is generally of a light friable soil; the southern portion rocky and barren, with but little bog except in the neighbourhood of Newtown-Hamilton. The climate of Armagh is considered to be one of the most genial in Ireland, and less rain is supposed to fall in this than in any other county. Only about one-twentieth of the land is naturally barren, and Armagh offers a relatively large area of cultivable soil. Agriculture, however, is not far advanced, yet owing to the linen industry the inhabitants are generally in circumstances of comparative comfort. The principal crops are oats and potatoes, but all grain crops are decreasing, and flax, formerly grown to a considerable extent, is now practically neglected. The acreage under pasture slightly exceeds that of tillage. Cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry show a general increase in numbers. The principal manufacture, and that which has given a peculiar tone to the character of the population, is that of linen, though it has somewhat declined in modern times. It is not necessary to the promotion of this manufacture that the spinners and weavers should be congregated in large towns, or united in crowded and unwholesome factories. On the contrary, most of its branches can be carried on in the cottages of the peasantry. The men devote to the loom those hours which are not required for the cultivation of their little farms; the women spin and reel the yarn during the intervals of their other domestic occupations. Smooth lawns, pure springs and the open sky are necessary for perfecting the bleaching process. Hence the numerous bleachers dwell in the country with their assistants and machinery. Such is the effect of this combination of agricultural occupations with domestic manufactures that the farmers are more than competent to supply the resident population of the county with vegetable, though not with animal food; and some of the less crowded and less productive parts of Ulster receive from Armagh a considerable supply of oats, barley and flour. Apples are grown in such quantities as to entitle the county to the title applied to it, the orchard of Ireland. Entry: ARMAGH
LUNG, in anatomy, the name of each of the pair of organs of respiration in man and other air-breathing animals, the corresponding organs in fishes being the _branchiae_ or gills (see RESPIRATORY SYSTEM). The word in Old English was _lungen_; it appears in many Teutonic languages, cf. Ger. _Lunge_, Du. _long_, Swed. _lunga_; the Teutonic root from which these are derived meant "light," and the lungs were so-called from their lightness. The word "lights" was formerly used as synonymous with "lungs," but is now confined to the lungs of sheep, pigs or cattle; it is etymologically connected with "lung," the pre-Teutonic root being seen in Sansk. _laghu_, Gr. [Greek: elaphros]. Entry: LUNG
The symptoms vary with the species of animal, the mode of infection, and the seat of the primary lesion, internal or external. In all its forms anthrax is an inoculable disease, transmission being surely and promptly effected by this means, and it may be conveyed to nearly all animals by inoculation of a wound of the skin or through the digestive organs. Cattle, sheep and horses nearly always owe their infection to spores or bacilli ingested with their food or water, and pigs usually contract the disease by eating the flesh of animals dead of anthrax. Entry: ANTHRAX
The pigs (_Suidae_) and the hippopotamuses (_Hippopotamidae_) are essentially Old World groups, the former of which has alone succeeded in reaching America, where it is represented by the collateral branch of the peccaries (_Dicotylinae_). An African origin would well explain the present distribution of both groups, but further evidence on this point is required before anything decisive can be affirmed, although it is noteworthy that the earliest known pig (_Geniohyus_) is African. The Suinae are at present spread all over the Old World, although the African forms (other than the one from the north) are markedly distinct from those inhabiting Europe and Asia. Hippopotamuses, on the contrary, are now exclusively African, although they were represented in tropical Asia during the Pliocene and over the greater part of Europe at a later epoch. Entry: A
_Industries._--The predominating soil is a loam of little depth, in most places intermixed with considerable quantities of stones of various sizes, but differing materially in character according to the nature of the subsoil. Clay is mostly confined to the eastern coast, and to the northern parts of Castlereagh. Of sandy soil the quantity is small; it occurs chiefly near Dundrum. Moor grounds are mostly confined to the skirts of the mountains. Bogs, though frequent, are scarcely sufficient to furnish a supply of fuel to the population. Agriculture is in a fairly satisfactory condition. The bulk of the labouring population is orderly and industrious, and dwell in circumstances contrasting well with those of others of their class in some other parts of Ireland. Tillage land declines somewhat in favour of pasture land. Oats, potatoes and turnips are the principal crops; flax, formerly important, is almost neglected. The breed of horses is an object of much attention, and some of the best racers in Ireland have been bred in this county. The native breed of sheep, a small hardy race, is confined to the mountains. The various other kinds of sheep have been much improved by judicious crosses from the best breeds. Pigs are reared in great numbers, chiefly for the Belfast market, where the large exportation occasions a constant demand for them. Poultry farming is a growing industry. The fisheries, of less value than formerly, are centred at Donaghadee, Newcastle, Strangford and Ardglass, the headquarters of the herring fishery. The chief industries in the county generally are linen manufacture and bleaching, and brewing. Entry: DOWN
Agriculture and stock-raising are prosperous. A large number of horned cattle are reared, and in no other French department are so many horses found within the same area; the breed, that of Craon, is famed for its strength. Craon has also given its name to the most prized breed of pigs in western France. Mayenne produces excellent butter and poultry and a large quantity of honey. The cultivation of the vine is very limited, and the most common beverage is cider. Wheat, oats, barley and buckwheat, in the order named, are the most important crops, and a large quantity of flax and hemp is produced. Game is abundant. The timber grown is chiefly beech, oak, birch, elm and chestnut. The department produces antimony, auriferous quartz and coal. Marble, slate and other stone are quarried. There are several chalybeate springs. The industries include flour-milling, brick and tile making, brewing, cotton and wool spinning, and the production of various textile fabrics (especially ticking) for which Laval and Château-Gontier are the centres, agricultural implement making, wood and marble sawing, tanning and dyeing. The exports include agricultural produce, live-stock, stone and textiles; the chief imports are coal, brandy, wine, furniture and clothing. The department is served by the Western railway. It forms part of the circumscriptions of the IV. army corps, the académie (educational division) of Rennes, and the court of appeal of Angers. It comprises three arrondissements (Laval, Château-Gontier and Mayenne), with 27 cantons and 276 communes. Laval, the capital, is the seat of a bishopric of the province of Tours. The other principal towns are Château-Gontier and Mayenne, which are treated under separate headings. The following places are also of interest: Evron, which has a church of the 12th and 13th centuries; Jublains, with a Roman fort and other Roman remains; Lassay, with a fine château of the 14th and 16th centuries; and Ste Suzanne, which has remains of medieval ramparts and a fortress with a keep of the Romanesque period. Entry: MAYENNE