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Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936

"From Mine Own People"

"
Between those spades and Nafferton's Pig, Pinecoffin was rather heavily
burdened.
Nafferton now began to take up "(a) The food-supply of the indigenous Pig,
with a view to the improvement of its capacities as a flesh-former. (b) The
acclimatization of the exotic Pig, maintaining its distinctive peculiarities."
Pinecoffin replied exhaustively that the exotic Pig would become merged in the
indigenous type; and quoted horse-breeding statistics to prove this.
The side-issue was debated, at great length on Pinecoffin's side, till
Nafferton owned that he had been in the wrong, and moved the previous question.
When Pinecoffin had quite written himself out about flesh-formers, and fibrins,
and glucose and the nitrogenous constituents of maize and lucerne, Nafferton
raised the question of expense. By this time Pinecoffin, who had been
transferred from Kohat, had developed a Pig theory of his own, which he stated
in thirty-three folio pages--all carefully filed by Nafferton. Who asked for
more.
These things took ten months, and Pinecoffin's interest in the potential
Piggery seemed to die down after he had stated his own views. But Nafferton
bombarded him with letters on "the Imperial aspect of the scheme, as tending to
officialize the sale of pork, and thereby calculated to give offence to the
Mahomedan population of Upper India.


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