We can trace the origin of our domesticated pigs more clearly than in the case of the most of the other subjugated animals. The creature is evidently descended from the wild boar of Europe and Asia; and though long under domestication and greatly varied from its primitive stock, it readily reverts to something like its original form when allowed to betake itself once more to the wilds. The domestication of the species appears to have been accomplished at several different points in Asia and Europe. The forms which are found in eastern Asia differ from those which are kept in the western portion of the great continent, and may have their blood commingled with that of another species which is native in that part of the world. Among our domesticated animals the pig is exceptional in the fact that it has been bred for its flesh alone; for although the hide is valuable and the hair serves certain purposes, as in the manufacture of brushes, these uses are only incidental and modern. They have not affected the plan of the breeder, whose aim has been to produce the largest weight of flesh in the shortest time, and with the least expenditure of food. In this peculiar task the success has been remarkable, the creature having been made to vary from its primitive condition in an extraordinary manner. In its wild state the species develops slowly, requiring, perhaps, three or four years to attain its maximum size. It never becomes very fat, but remains an agile, swift-footed, and fierce tenant of the wilds. Under the conditions of subjugation the pig has been brought to a state in which its qualities of mind and body have undergone a very great change. In the more developed breeds, even the males, when kept about the barnyard, are quiet-natured and not at all dangerous. The creatures have become slow-moving; they attain their full development in about half the time required for the growth of their wild kindred, and when adult they may outweigh them in the ratio of four to one. The effect arising from the food-supply which our pigs afford is well seen in the use which is made of their flesh in all the ruder work of men, at least in the case of those of our race. Our soldiers and sailors are to a great extent fed on the flesh of these creatures, which lends itself readily to preservation by the use of salt. So rapidly can these animals be bred, owing to the number of young which they produce in a litter and the swiftness of their growth, that sudden demands for an increase in the supply, such as occurred at the outbreak of our civil war, can quickly be met. If the need should arise, the quantity of pork produced in this country could readily be doubled within eighteen months. This is the case with no other source of flesh-supply, and this fact gives the pig a peculiar importance.