Those who feed for the early market, and desire to realize the largest profits with the least outlay of time and money, will resort to the Suffolk, the Berkshire, or the Essex, to obtain crosses with sows of the larger breeds, and will breed up more or less closely to these breeds, according to the special object they have in view. The Suffolks are nearly allied to the Chinese, and possess much the same characteristics. Though generally regarded as too small for profit except to those who breed for stock, their extraordinary fattening qualities and their early maturity adapt them eminently for crossing with the larger breeds. The form of the well-built Suffolk, when not too closely inbred, is a model of compactness, and lightness of bone and offal. Though often too short in the body, a large-boned female will generally correct this fault, and produce an offspring suited to the wants of the dairy farmer. The Berkshire is also mixed in with the Chinese, and owes no small part of its valuable characteristics to that race. The Berkshires, as a breed, often attain considerable size and weight. The improved Essex are the favorites of some, and for early maturity they are difficult to surpass. Some think they require greater care and better feeding than the Berkshire. What is wanted is to unite, so far as possible, the early maturity and the facility to take on fat of the Suffolk, the Chinese, or the Essex, with a tendency at the same time to make flesh as well as fat; or, in other words, to attain a good growth and size, and to fatten easily when the time comes to put them down. The Chinese or the Suffolk are but ill adapted for hams and bacon; but, crossed upon the kind of hog already described, the produce will be likely to be valuable. The most judicious practical farmers are new fully satisfied, I think, that the tendency, for the last ten years, in the Eastern States more especially, has been to breed too fine; and that the result of this error has been to cover our swine with fat at a very early age, and before they have attained a respectable size. In other words, the flesh and bone have been too far sacrificed to fat. A reäction has already taken place in the opinions on this point, and perhaps some caution may be necessary, that it does not load too far in the opposite direction. Some practical dairymen think that with a dairy of twenty or thirty cows they can keep from forty to fifty swine, by turning into the orchard or the pasture, in early spring, and as pigs, where they will easily procure a large part of their food, till the close of fall, when they are taken in and fed up gradually at first, but afterward more highly, and fattened as rapidly and turned as soon as possible. Others say there is no profit in working hogs, and that they should be kept confined and constantly and rapidly growing up to the time of turning them for pork, growing steadily, but not laying on too much fat till fed up to it.