Kitap 12
4
Now this obedience to the sound of a trumpet isSwine-keeping in Italy. nothing astonishing. For in Italy the swineherds manage the feeding of their pigs in the same way. They do not follow close behind the beasts, as in Greece, but keep some distance in front of them, sounding their horn every now and then; and the animals follow behind and run together at the sound. Indeed, the complete familiarity which the animals show with the particular horn to which they belong seems at first astonishing and almost incredible. For owing to the populousness and wealth of the country, the droves of swine in Italy are exceedingly large, especially along the sea coast of the Tuscans and Gauls: for one sow will bring up a thousand pigs, or sometimes even more. They therefore drive them out from their night styes to feed, according to their litters and ages. Whence, if several droves are taken to the same place, they cannot preserve these distinction of litters; but they of course get mixed up with each other, both as they are being driven out, and as they feed, and as they are being brought home. Accordingly the device of the horn-blowing has been invented to separate them, when they have got mixed up together, without labour or trouble. For as they feed, one swineherd goes in one direction sounding his horn, and another in another: and thus the animals sort themselves of their own accord, and follow their own horns with such eagerness that it is impossible by any means to stop or hinder them. But in Greece, when the swine get mixed up in the oak forests in their search for the mast, the swineherd who has most assistants and the best help at his disposal, when collecting his own animals, drives off his neighbour’s also. Sometimes too a thief lies in wait, and drives them off without the swineherd knowing how he lost them; because the beasts straggle a long way from their drivers, in their eagerness to find acorns, when they are just beginning to fall. . . .
