Page:The Hog.djvu/55

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53
WILD BOARS IN GERMANY.

ing the best aim for readily disabling him. In this situation the sagacious dog contrives to keep him until his master fires; then if the wounded boar makes off, the boar-hound (a species of blood-hound ) is let loose, who pursues him for miles, giving tongue, nor will he leave him even if other boars come in the way.

At the wild boar park of the Emperor of Austria, which is at Hüttelsdorf, near Vienna, Mr. Howitt states that he saw "numbers of swine of all ages and sizes, from the grisly old boar to the sow and her troop of suckling young ones. Here some grim old fellow as black as jet, or of a sun-burnt and savage gray, lay basking in the deep grass, and at our approach uttered a deep guff, and starting up, bolted into the wood. Others were lying their length under the broad trees, others scampering about with cocked tails. The sows and their young seemed most savage and impatient of our presence. Some were tame enough to come at the whistle of the keeper, and scores ran voraciously when he shook one of the wild cornel-trees, which grew plentifully in the forest. This is a tree as large as an apple-tree, bearing, in autumn, fruit of about the size of cherries, and of a coral red color. The swine are very fond of it, and as the trees were shook, and it pattered to the ground, they came running on all sides, and stood in the thickets eager for our departure, when they rushed ravenously forward and devoured it."

"After all," he continues, "the wild swine here can present but a faint idea of what they were in their ancient wilds. They are all of the true breed, and cannot for a moment be confounded with the tame variety; there is the tusked mouth, the thick fore-quarter, the narrow hind-quarter, the mane, the coarse bristles, the speed of gait, indicative of the wild breed, but they appeared tame and pigmy in comparison with the huge savage monsters bred in the obscure recesses of deep forests, and unacquainted with the sight of man.

"Hunters tell us that, notwithstanding the orders of Government to exterminate swine in the open forests, on account of the mischief they do to cultivated land, there are numbers in the forests in Hanover and Westphalia, huge, gaunt, and ferocious as ever. These will snuff the most distant approach of danger, and with terrific noises rush into the densest woods; or surrounding a solitary and unarmed individual, especially a woman or a child, will scour round and round them, coming nearer and nearer at every circle, until at last, bursting in upon them, they tear them limb from limb and devour them. Tame swine, which are herded in these forests and become mixed in breed with the wild, acquire the same blood-thirsty propensities, and will, in their herds, surround and devour persons in a similar manner."

The wild breed abound in Upper Austria, on the Styrian Alps, and in many parts of Hungary. In the latter country, a recent author speaking of them, says: "These animals have lost some little