Many are the animals which are specially mentioned in the Mosaic law as unfit for food, beside those that come under the general head of being unclean because they do not divide the hoof and chew the cud. There is none, however, that excited such abhorrence as the hog, or that was more utterly detested. It is utterly impossible for a European, especially one of the present day, to form even an idea of the utter horror and loathing with which the hog was regarded by the ancient Jews. Even at the present day, a zealous Jew or Mahometan looks upon the hog, or anything that belongs to the hog, with an abhorrence too deep for words. The older and stricter Jews felt so deeply on this subject, that they would never even mention the name of the hog, but always substituted for the objectionable word the term "the abomination." Several references are made in the Scriptures to the exceeding disgust felt by the Jews towards the Swine. The portion of the Mosaic law on which a Jew would ground his antipathy to the flesh of Swine is that passage which occurs in Lev. xi. 7: "And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be cloven-footed, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you." But the very same paragraph, of which this passage forms the termination, treats of other unclean beasts, such as the coney (or hyrax) and the hare, neither of which animals are held in such abhorrence as the Swine. This enactment could not therefore have produced the singular feeling with which the Swine were regarded by the Jews, and in all probability the antipathy was of far greater antiquity than the time of Moses. How hateful to the Jewish mind was the hog we may infer from many passages, several of which occur in the Book of Isaiah. See, for example, lxv. 3, 4: "A people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face; that sacrificeth in gardens, and burneth incense upon altars of brick; "Which remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments, which eat swine's flesh, and broth of abominable things is in their vessels." Here we have the people heaping one abomination upon another--the sacrifice to idols in the gardens, the burning of incense upon a forbidden altar and with strange fire, the living among the tombs, where none but madmen and evil spirits were supposed to reside, and, as the culminating point of iniquity, eating Swine's flesh, and drinking the broth in which it was boiled.