Photo by Ottomar Anschütz] [Berlin.
WILD BOAR.
In its long, bristly hair and powerful lower tusks, the wild boar is a very different animal from its domesticated descendants.
The True Pigs.
True pigs are found only in the Old World, and even there in very widely different forms. Typical of these quadrupeds is the well-known Wild Boar, found abundantly in many parts of Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor, and Central Asia. In the British Islands the wild boar must once have been extraordinarily plentiful, especially in Ireland, where its tame descendants still so greatly flourish. In the days of the Plantagenets wild swine fed and sheltered in the woodlands close to London. James I. hunted them near Windsor in 1617, and even down to the year 1683 these animals still had their haunts in the more secluded parts of England. Although now extinct in these Islands, the wild boar is to be found plentifully at the present day in France, Germany, Austria, Russia, and Spain, Greece, Albania, and other countries of the Mediterranean. In most parts of Europe the wild boar is shot during forest drives, but in the Caucasus and round the Black Sea the hardy peasants lie in wait for these animals by the fruit-trees on autumn nights or waylay them going to the water and shoot them single-handed. Many an old Cossack, writes Mr. Clive Phillipps-Wolley, bears the scars of some desperate encounter with these formidable foes. In Spain, where in the old days the boar was pursued by cavaliers with spear and pike, it is still, in the forests of Estremadura, followed with horse and hound, usually, says Mr. Abel Chapman, "during the stillness of a moonlight night, when the acorns are falling from the oaks in the magnificent Estremenian woods."
Photo by J. Turner-Turner, Esq.
DIVING-PIGS.
Half-wild pigs, found in Florida, where they live on refuse fish. (See [next page])
In India the wild boar of Europe and North Africa is replaced by a closely allied species (distinguished by a crest of long black bristles upon the neck and back), which furnishes some of the finest and most exciting sport in the world to mounted hunters armed with a sharp spear. There is not a pluckier or more fearless beast living than the boar; and as he carries long and extremely sharp tusks, and never scruples to use them, he is an exceedingly dangerous opponent when wounded and enraged. Severe and even fatal accidents have happened in the pursuit of this determined beast of chase. When at bay, the boar is absolutely reckless of life; and although pierced and mortally wounded by the spear, will yet force himself up the shaft, and with his dying effort inflict gaping wounds on the horse bearing his attacker. Indian shikaris, to illustrate the courage of the wild boar, say that he has the hardihood to drink at a river between two tigers; and Colonel R. Heber Percy mentions, in the Badminton volumes on "Big Game Shooting," that "several cases are on record in which an old boar has beaten off a tiger, and some in which the latter has been killed by a boar. The boar's extraordinary activity and sharp tusks make him no mean adversary, and his short neck makes it difficult for a tiger to seize it and give it that fatal wrench with which he likes to polish off his victims." A wild boar will stand as much as 3 feet at the shoulder—some sportsmen affirm considerably more—and weigh more than 300 lbs. The finest boar's tusk known is one mentioned in Rowland Ward's "Records of Big Game." This measures 11½ inches over the curve. It came from the Caucasus, and is in the possession of Colonel Veernhof.