Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 October 1891 — PIG BREEDING IN SICILY. [ARTICLE]

PIG BREEDING IN SICILY.

Curious Statistics of an Extensive Industry. The last British consular report from Palermo contains some curious details respecting the breeding of pigs in Sicily, which iu certain districts, and especially in mountainous parts, are reared in great numbers. Nearly all the small towns are overrun with.them, and they cure notouly useful for food, but act as scavengers to the dirty streets. They are enticed in towns to devour tho filthiest food by sprinkling bran over it. In the mountainous districts, whore there are oak forests, they are driven up to the high regions to feed on acorns. A good acorn year is a godsend to those who possess oak forests. For each full-grown pig as much as 10s. is paid for the acorn season to the owner of the forest; two mediumsized pigs and three small ones are admitted at the same rate. The pigs, which are thus driven about under the superintendence of boy swineherds, are all ear-marked, and speedily beooine accustomed to their new conditions of life. They form among themselves a sort of republican government, and are docile to the calls and windings of the horn of thoir young guardians, who are clothed in very plain and primitive fashion, and live simply on bread and water, taking out with them every day loaves baked in the ovens of the farm, and in shape precisely the same as those that have been found in the bakers’ shops at Pompeii. The pigs are driven back home at night and housod to avoid disease, and strango to say, theirsheds are scrupulously clean. It is said that they establish internally a kind of sanitary jurisdiction, aud that a pig which is found a delinquent against the sanitary rules is attacked with fury by the rest and killed.

The consul has seen covered pig stios made of stone and capable of holding 300 or 400 pigs, and found them dry and clean and very dusty. The only value of the pigs consists in their being sold as fresh pork and for the making of sausages. They fattern well upon acorns, and their flesh is very white aud tasteful, whereas the color of the pork in the towns is quite dark. The sausages which are made are also very tolerable, but the curing of pork for hain or bacon is unknown in Sicily. Pigs in Sicily enjoy as much social distinction as in Ireland; they, with tho poultry and other animals, share their master’s tenouiont, aud will trot after him daily to and fro on his way to his work in the fields. Perhaps pork is more commonly eaten than any other kind of moat in the island. The boy swineherds and goatherds who tend the flocks in tho mountains receive a daily provision of bread cooked in the furm buildings, and get nothing else in winter aud summer, not oven in the severest weather, and never us a rule, even taste “pasta” or macaroni. Bosides the daily provision of bread they receive a dole of 75f a year, paid in three parts, out of which they find their clothes. A great part of the year the lads sleep in tho open air or in temporary straw huts, often in rainy or snowy weather, and with such a hurd life and nothing but coarse bread aud water from year’s end to year’s cu,d their cheerfulness and good humor appearquite marvelous, and many of them are bright, intelligent, lively lads, aud graceful and courteous in their demeanor.—[London Tin>o»