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Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936

"Plain Tales from the Hills"

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."
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.


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