After
Pinecoffin had wondered a little at Nafferton's rage for
information, he sent back a monograph, fifty-one pages, on "Products
of the Pig." This led him, under Nafferton's tender handling,
straight to the Cawnpore factories, the trade in hog-skin for
saddles--and thence to the tanners. Pinecoffin wrote that
pomegranate-seed was the best cure for hog-skin, and suggested--for
the past fourteen months had wearied him--that Nafferton should
"raise his pigs before he tanned them."
Nafferton went back to the second section of his fifth question.
How could the exotic Pig be brought to give as much pork as it did
in the West and yet "assume the essentially hirsute characteristics
of its oriental congener?" Pinecoffin felt dazed, for he had
forgotten what he had written sixteen month's before, and fancied
that he was about to reopen the entire question. He was too far
involved in the hideous tangle to retreat, and, in a weak moment, he
wrote:--"Consult my first letter." Which related to the Dravidian
Pig. As a matter of fact, Pinecoffin had still to reach the
acclimatization stage; having gone off on a side-issue on the
merging of types.
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