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Title:  Natural history: general and particular, by the Count de Buffon, translated into English. Illustrated with above 260 copper-plates, and occasional notes and observations by the translator. [pt.3]
Author: Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de, 1707-1788.
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greatly, and become wild. They resemble our boards; and their bodies are shorter, and their snout and skin thicker than the domestic hogs, which, in warm climates, are all black, like the wild board.By a ridiculous prejudice, which superstition alone could support, the Mahometans are depri|ved of this useful animal. They have been told that it is unclean; and, therefore, they dare not either touch or feed it. The Chinese, on the contrary, are extremely fond of pork. They rear hogs in numerous flocks, and pork is their most common food. This circumstance is said to have prevented them from embracing the religion of Mahomet. The Chinese hogs, as well as those of Siam and India, differ a little from the common kind. They are smaller, have shorter legs, and their flesh is whiter and more delicate. They are reared in several places of France; and they intermix and produce with the domestic hog. Numbers of them are rear|ed by the Negroes; and, though there are few of them among the Moors, or in the countries inhabited by Mahometans; yet wild boars are as common in Asia and Africa as in Europe.Hence these animals affect not any particular climate: But the boar, by becoming domestic, seems to have degenerated more in cold than in warm countries. A very slight alteration of climate is sufficient to change their colour. In the northern provinces of France, and even in 0