The Society have old authority for any amount of confusion between the swine and the rodents. The guinea-pig has long ago established its right to its name, on the indisputable grounds of being entirely unconnected with Guinea, and not a pig, but a rodent. The capybara is also called a water-pig (even in its Greek name) in virtue, doubtless, of being a rodent. "Porcupine" means a thorny pig; the name being again found convenient for a rodent, and enunciated with peculiar emphasis by the wag who wrote:-- Each hair will stand on end upon thy wig, Like quills upon the frightful porcupig. Then, by way of pleasant variation, the hedgehog derives its title from the fact of being neither a hog nor a rodent, but only a prickly kind of mole. So that confusion among pigs and rodents is an ancient, time-honoured, and respectable state of affairs, only feebly deferred to by the Zoological Society in placing the two side by side. Let us consider them, therefore, in a proper derangement and with a due regard to confusion. [Illustration: BOHEMIAN.] The thoughtless world is disrespectful to the pig. It even uses its name as a term of reproach. Nobody likes to be called a pig, and yet if some were to accept the epithet with a good grace, and conscientiously act up to the character, there would be a deal of improvement in their manners. Proverbs abuse and slight the pig. "Pigs may whistle, but they have an ill mouth for it," says one; "Drunk as David's sow," says another; "What can you expect from a pig but a grunt?" asks a third, totally ignoring the existence of such products as bacon, lard, bristles, and saddle-leather. But then proverbs are always perpetrating injustices somewhere, until abuse from a proverb has become a sort of testimonial to the worth of anything--animal, vegetable, or mineral. The pig eats all it can get, certainly, but that is only a manifestation of what we are apt to call, in ourselves, prudence and business acumen. Once thoroughly fed it regards the world with serene apathy, but that is merely broadmindedness and toleration. The nearest relatives here to the familiar porker of our native agricultural show are the wild swine--European and Asiatic--well set-up creatures, of form and manner not to be considered with disrespect, and carrying with them no more of traditional piggishness than a certain easy Bohemianism of manner and irregularity of bristle. [Illustration: WELL GROOMED.] [Illustration: SERENE APATHY.]