SWINE corm chazir). We have already no• ticed these animals [CHAziR], chiefly as they occur in a wild state, and here refer to the domesticated breeds only, because they appear to have been re peatedly introduced and reared by the Hebrew people, notwithstanding the strong prohibitions in the law of Moses (Is. lxv. 4). .
Egyptian pictures, the parable of the Prodigal Son, and Christ's miraculous cure of the demoniac, when lie permitted swine to be possessed and de • stroyed by rushing, over a precipice into the sea 01 Galilee, furnish ample proofs that during- the do minion of the Romans they wcrc kept around the kingdom of Judah ; and the restrictiv,e laws of Hyrcanus on this subject indicate that the Jews themselves were not altogether strangers to Cois unlawful practice. Commentators ascribe this abundance of swine to the numerous Pagan sacri fices of these aninaals in the temples : but we do not deem this to be a sufficiently correct view of the case, since hogs of every denomination were less used for that purpose than oxen, goats, and sheep. May it not be conjectured that in those days of a greatly condensed population the poor found in swine's flesh, and still more in the fat and lard, melted for culinary purposes, as it still is in every part of pagan Africa, a most desirable ali ment, still more acceptable than the salt fish im ported from Sidon, to season their usual vegetable diet ? When the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the waters to boil' (Is. lxiv. z) ; and, again, a broth of abominable things in their vessels' (lxv. 4). For, although the Mosaic law justly con demned the use of swine's flesh, at the time of the departure of Israel out of Egypt, when the state of slavery the people had been in, there is reason to believe, had greatly multiplied leprosy, and, more over, when it was important to enforce cleanliness among the multitude on many accounts ; yet the reasoning of the ancients and of commentators, Rabbinical and medical, regarding the unhealthi ness of sound pork, in moderate quantities, as a condiment, or more generally as an article of food, is entirely erroneous. For in some provinces of
ancient Persia, the practice of curing animal food was known so early, that the procession of tribute bearing deputies from the seveml satrapies, sculp tured on the great stairs at Persepolis, represents at least one nation bringing preserved flesh meat, apparently hams ; and already, before the conquest of northern Gaul by Cxsar, pork and various sau sages were exportea from Belgium to the Roman capital. Neither in the tropics nor in the East, during the first centuries of Christianity, or in the era of the Crusades, or among the Christians of the present day, are any ill effects ascribed to the use of swine's flesh ; and the Moslem population, which is debarred the use of this kind of food, is, perhaps, more liable to disease and to the plague than others, because it lacks the stamina of resist ance to infection, and that supply of digestive nutri ment which keeps 'the alimentary system in a healthy condition. The rich Moslem supply the deficiency by vegetable oils and butter or ghee ; hence, while the wealthy official class multiplies, the poorer classes, for want of a cheap supply of similar ingredients, diminish.—C. H. S.