Nafferton filed that, and asked what sort of people looked after Pig. This
started an ethnological excursus on swineherds, and drew from Pinecoffin long
tables showing the proportion per thousand of the caste in the Derajat.
Nafferton filed that bundle, and explained that the figures which he wanted
referred to the Cis-Sutlej states, where he understood that Pigs were very fine
and large, and where he proposed to start a Piggery. By this time, Government
had quite forgotten their instructions to Mr. Pinecoffin.
They were like the gentlemen, in Keats' poem, who turned well-oiled wheels to
skin other people. But Pinecoffin was just entering into the spirit of the Pig-
hunt, as Nafferton well knew he would do. He had a fair amount of work of his
own to clear away; but he sat up of nights reducing Pig to five places of
decimals for the honor of his Service. He was not going to appear ignorant of
so easy a subject as Pig.
Then Government sent him on special duty to Kohat, to "inquire into" the big-
seven-foot, iron-shod spades of that District. People had been killing each
other with those peaceful tools; and Government wished to know "whether a
modified form of agricultural implement could not, tentatively and as a
temporary measure, be introduced among the agricultural population without
needlessly or unduly exasperating the existing religious sentiments of the
peasantry.
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