which curve slightly upwards, and are capable of inflicting fearful wounds, the eye full, neck thick and muscular, the shoulders high, the loins broad, the tail stiff, and finished off with a tuft of bristles at the tip, the haunch well turned, and the legs strong. A full-grown wild boar in India averages from thirty to forty inches in height at the shoulder. The African wild boar is about twenty-eight or thirty inches high.
The wild boar is a very active and powerful animal, and becomes fiercer as he grows older. When he exists in a state of nature, he will usually be found in moist, shady, and well-wooded situations, not far remote from streams or water. In India, they are found in the thick jungles, in plantations of sugar-canes, rice, or rhur, or in the thick patches of high, long grass.[1] In England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, their resorts have been in the woods and forests. This animal is naturally herbivorous, and appears to feed by choice upon plants, fruits, and roots. He will, however, eat the worms and larvæ which he finds in the ground, also snakes and other such reptiles, and the eggs of birds; and Buffon states that wild boars have been seen to devour the flesh of dead horses, while other authors accuse them of devouring hares, leverets, partridges, and indeed all kinds of small game, and feeding greedily upon carrion; but this has also been asserted to be only the case when they are pressed by hunger. They seldom quit their coverts during the day, but prowl about in search of food during twilight and the night. Their acute sense of smell enables them to detect the presence of roots or fruits deeply imbedded in the soil, and they often do considerable mischief by ploughing up the ground in search of them, particularly as they do not, like the common hog, root up a little spot here and there, but plough long continuous furrows.
The wild boar, properly so called, is neither a solitary nor a gregarious animal. For the first two or three years the whole herd
- ↑ The wild hog delights in cultivated situations, but will not remain where water is not at hand in which he can quench his thirst and wallow at his ease, nor will he resort a second season to a spot that does not afford ample cover, either of heavy grass or underwood jungle, within a certain distance of him, to fly to in case of molestation, and especially to serve as a retreat during the hot season, as otherwise he would find no shelter. The sugar-cane is his great delight, both as affording his favorite food and yielding a highly impervious, and unfrequented situation. In these the hogs, and the breeding sows especially, commit great devastation, for the latter not only devour but cut the canes for a litter, and to throw up a species of hut, which they do with much art, leaving a small entrance which they can stop up at pleasure. Sows never quit their young pigs without completely shutting them up. This is, however, only requisite for a few days, after which, the little ones may be seen following their mother at a good round pace, though evidently not more than a week or ten days old.—Williamson's Oriental Field Sports.
