A BLIND PIG'S FRIEND.
A great many animals help one another in distress, though none rival the mothers in this regard, unless it be the male partridge. The best example that ever I can quote concerns the behaviour of that romantic animal of domesticity, a Middle White sow. She is in the same Kentish field with a number of other sows of which one is stone blind. The blind sow cannot be induced to move either by blows or wheedling ; but waits patiently and never in vain for her companion. With this friend she moves so freely about the field that for a song while the blindness passed unnoticed by her keeper. The companion seldom actually touches the blind sow, but con- ducts her by low friendly grunts, and day in, day out, is wholly devoted to her blind companion, who is helpless without her. I suppose the pig comes rather high in the scale of animal Intelligence. It quite certainly is the cleanest of all domestic animals, except the cat, and when given suitable housing has a sanitary precision of almost Mosaic strictness. The sheep comes very low in the scale, but like the pig has an inex- plicable knowledge of the time of day, if feeding arrangements are at all regular. * *
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