The skin, when properly dressed, is used for the seats of saddles; by book-binders, and other artisans.
In China hogs' skins are much in request by shoe-makers. All the shoes that are sold to Europeans at Canton are made of hogs' leather, the hair having previously been burnt off with a hot iron. In our own country, when swine are killed for food, it is not customary to strip off the skin, but merely to rid it of the bristles, by scalding the animals, after they are dead, with hot water, or singeing them with lighted straw. Consequently the hogs' skins which we use are chiefly imported from abroad. The bristles of swine are made into brushes of various kinds, and are also employed by shoe-makers in the place of needles.
Among the other uses of swine, it may not generally be known that, in the island of Minorca, they are employed as beasts of draught. They are frequently yoked to the plough with asses; and one writer speaks of having seen a cow, a sow, and two young horses, all yoked together, and of these the sow drew the best. In some parts of Italy swine are used in hunting for truffles, an eatable species of fungus which grow at the depth of some inches in the ground. A cord being tied to the hind leg of one of these animals, the beast is driven into certain pastures; and we are told that truffles are always to be found wherever he stops and begins to turn up the earth with his nose.
Most writers have asserted that swine are long-lived, but few instances are allowed to occur of their attaining a great age; as it is neither profitable nor convenient to keep them to the full extent of their time. A gentleman in Hampshire kept a sow till she was nearly seventeen years old; and, at this period, she began to exhibit some signs of old age by the decay of her teeth, and ceasing to be so fertile as she had previously been. This animal afforded an instance of the extremely prolific nature of swine. She is calculated to have been the parent of no fewer than 300 young ones. The great weight to which swine are sometimes fed would appear altogether incredible had it not been well attested. In one instance a pig was known to weigh 1410 pounds when alive; and 1215 pounds when killed and dressed.
ORDER VII.—CETE, OR CETACEOUS ANIMALS.
117. The NARWAL, or SEA-UNICORN (Monodon monoceros) is a marine animal from twenty to thirty feet in length, with a long, tapering, twisted, and pointed weapon of ivory in front of the head.
It has a small fin on each side of the breast, in place of fore feet, an horizontally flattened tail, and a spiracle or breathing hole on the highest part of the head. The skin is white, variegated with numerous black spots on the upper parts of the body; and the weapon is generally from five to eight feet in length.
These animals are found in the Greenland seas, and they occasionally migrate southward off the British coasts. Their name of narh-wal signifies a whale that subsists on dead bodies.
The Greenlanders pursue the narwals as they do other whales, chiefly on account of the oil which they obtain from them. This is considered superior, in many respects, to the oil of the great whale ([118]), and is used by them both with food and to burn in their lamps. These people also eat the flesh of the narwal prepared by fire, dried in a half putrid state, and sometimes even raw; and they are also partial to the intestines as food. The tendons serve them as a strong kind of thread. The projecting weapon, which is not a horn but a species of tusk, in its substance not much unlike the tusk of an elephant, is sometimes cut into the heads of arrows; and, in some parts of Greenland where wood is scarce, these weapons are occasionally used in the structure of tents and sledges. As ivory, they are not of much use, since, from their twisted form, they cut to great disadvantage. The kings of Denmark have, in the castle of Rosenberg, a throne formed of the tusks of the narwal.
It has of late years been ascertained that the Japanese have a very extraordinary opinion of the medical virtues of these tusks. A Dutch merchant, on his return to Europe, happened, among other curiosities, to transmit one of them to a friend in Japan, who by the sale of it became extremely rich. From that time the Dutch wrote, to their correspondents in Europe, for as many as could be sent, and great profit was made of them; and, although by the continued importation, the price has since been considerably diminished, it still continues very high.