MORE THAN BACON
To me pigs have always been something more than mere bacon and I make no apology for returning to the subject of their versatility and intelligence, prompted, as I am, by letters from readers at home and others as far apart as Kenya and New Zealand. For instance, there is a pig in Napier that squeals accompaniment to the music of an accordion and loves to swim in the sea, going out fifty yards before turning back to play havoc with the sand castles of children playing on the beach. How different the behaviour of the swimming pig at Borth in Cardiganshire which, a Bedford reader tells me, dashed out of its sty to cross the dunes and swim out to sea without turning back, watched by its sorrowful owner. Was this, I wonder, an Irish porker that suddenly remembered some titbit left behind across the water? A letter from Lady Seton who lives at Nyeri, Kenya, tells of a number of Portu- guese pigs that used to have sties on either side of a river. When one sty was cleaned out the occupants swam across to their residence on the other side.
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