There were cattle as well as swine in early Virginia. The obsession of
lawmakers with hog-stealing derived, probably, from the ubiquity of this
crime. It was more common than theft of other livestock because a) the
swine population grew faster than the others; and b) stealing a hog was
easier and easier to hide than stealing, say, a cow. The thieves were
after meat, generally.

A good discussion of this and related issues can be found in the new
book by Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domesticated
Animals Transformed Early America.

Doug Deal

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