Southern Shield

From the Southern Planter.

BERKSHIRE HOGS

I believe that, with one half the quantity of corn, the Berkshires will make good pork, and more of it than any other breed I have ever known. Upon good grass they will require no feeding. They are the most quiet hogs and the best nurses I have ever seen. I have never known one to jump a fence eighteen inches high, and one of the greatest recommendations to Virginia farmers is, that a single cross of the Berkshire upon the common stock immediately changes and improves the character of the offspring.-To show the additional weight and size obtained by the improved cross, I would refer you to a communication in the March number of the Farmer's Register. page 174, where the weight of several larger lots in Ohio of the cross are reported to have averaged from two hundred and fifty to four hundred and thirty-five pounds, at sixteen and twenty months old.

In the same article, one single cross under the most unfavorable circumstances, is reported to have effected an increased average of one hundred and two pounds over the weight of the increased stock. E. Phinney, of Lexington, Massachusetts, sent to market, on the 22d February last, fifteen half Berkshires. from fifteen to eighteen months old, of which the total weight was seven thousand nine hundred and thirty and a half lbs. Some of these weighing upwards of five hundred pounds were only fifteen months old.

In a letter from Mahard, Esq., of Cincinnati, one of the largest pork packers in that city, it is stated that the half blood berkshires are found to stand driving better than any other breed of hogs.

These facts are sufficient, I presume, without the thousands of others that could be adduced, to establish the superiority of this celebrated stock.

A. B.