_Hogs not Pigs._--In Cowper's humorous verses, "The yearly Distress, or
Tithing-time at Stoke in Essex," one of the grumblers talks
"of pigs that he has lost
By maggots at the tail."
Upon this I have to remark that an intelligent grazier assures me that
pigs are never subject to the evil here complained of, but that lambs of
a year old, otherwise called "hogs" or "hoggets," are often infested by
it. It would appear, therefore, that the poet, misled by the ambiguous
name, and himself knowing nothing of the matter but by report,
attributed to pigs that which happens to the other kind of animal, viz.
lambs a year old, which have not yet been shorn.