Page - 1162 - in The Complete Aristotle

fondest of roots, owing to the fact that its snout is peculiarly adapted for digging them out of the ground; it is also of all animals the most easily pleased in the matter of food. It takes on fat more rapidly in proportion to its size than any other animal; in fact, a pig can be fattened for the market in sixty days. Pig-dealers can tell the amount of flesh taken on, by having first weighed the animal while it was being starved. Before the fattening process begins, the creature must be starved for three days; and, by the way, animals in general will take on fat if subjected previously to a course of starvation; after the three days of starvation, pig-breeders feed the animal lavishly. Breeders in Thrace, when fattening pigs, give them a drink on the first day; then they miss one, and then two days, then three and four, until the interval extends over seven days. The pigs’ meat used for fattening is composed of barley, millet, figs, acorns, wild pears, and cucumbers. These animals-and other animals that have warm bellies-are fattened by repose. (Pigs also fatten the better by being allowed to wallow in mud. They like to feed in batches of the same age. A pig will give battle even to a wolf.) If a pig be weighed when living, you may calculate that after death its flesh will weigh five-sixths of that weight, and the hair, the blood, and the rest will weigh the other sixth. When suckling their young, swinelike all other animals-get attenuated. So much for these animals. < div id=“section157” class=“section” title=“7”> 7 Cattle feed on corn and grass, and fatten on vegetables that tend to cause flatulency, such as bitter vetch or bruised beans or bean-stalks. The older ones also will fatten if they be fed up after an incision has been made into their hide, and air blown thereinto. Cattle will fatten also on barley in its natural state or on barley finely winnowed, or on sweet food, such as figs, or pulp from the wine-press, or on elm-leaves. But nothing is so fattening as the heat of the sun and wallowing in warm waters. If the horns of young cattle be smeared with hot wax, you may mold them to any shape you please, and cattle are less subject to disease of the hoof if you smear the horny parts with wax, pitch, or olive oil. Herded cattle suffer more when they are forced to change their pasture ground by frost than when snow is the cause of change. Cattle grow all the more in size when they are kept from sexual commerce over a number of years; and it is with a view to growth in size that in Epirus the so-called Pyrrhic kine are not allowed intercourse with the bull until they are nine years old; from which circumstance they are nicknamed the ‘unbulled’ kine. Of these Pyrrhic cattle, by the way, they say that there are 1162