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The Razorback of Florida.

An Intelligent, Large-Limbed and a Fleet-Footed Animal.

     The “Florida razorback” is the hog indigenous to this climate and soil. He is usually large and fleet of foot, being the only known porker that can outrun a darky. He has a tail of wondrous length, which, while he is in active motion, he twists into the tightest corkscrew, but with which while quickly feeding he raps his leathery sides much in the manner that the docile cow uses her tail. He is self supporting. He earns his own living and thrives well in the highwoods, in the flatwoods, in the hummocks, and in the marshes. He subsists on anything he can find above the earth or underneath the surface. He has a clear far-seeing eye, and is very sensitive of hearing.

     Nature has equipped him with a snout almost as long as the beak of the wild pelican of Borneo, with which he can penetrate the earth many inches in quest of worms, snakes and insects, says a writer in Forest and Stream. He is the most intelligent of all the hogs, and is likewise the most courageous. He has been known to engage in mortal combat with a coon for the possession of a watermelon, and rend asunder a barbed wire fence.

     He is so intelligent that when he lives in the towns he becomes as familiar with the railroad schedules as are train dispatchers themselves, and plies his vocation in great numbers about the railroad stations, and yet no train ever ran over a “razorback.”

     Whenever the railroad companies are forced to pay for the killing of a hog it always proves to be a Berkshire, a Guinea, or some other fine breed-never a “razorback.” He is too active and alert to be caught even by a locomotive. He is nervous, restless, energetic, and hence does not thrive well in pens. Confined he loses rather than gains flesh. He is always ripe for market, and his condition is as good in August as it is in January. His owner respects his intelligence, admires his nerve and is fond of him as food, for he may always be depended upon to afford the proverbial “streak of lean” with a very small “streak of fat.” He is the king of hogs. He can be grown more profitably than any other known variety, since, as has been observed, he is energetic and intelligent enough to feed and clothe himself.

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