THE WILD BOAR. 99 
the recipient met me unexpectedly and no refuge 
was near. Brought up in this wild country, I 
carried a gun when very young, and as I never went 
into the woods without one, I suppose I felt com- 
paratively safe. I recollect that one of our grooms, 
when making a short cut through a fern bed which 
existed on one part of the property, was unexpectedly 
charged by a sow, but he escaped by the hardest 
running. From her manner it was evident that she 
had young ones, and my father, myself, and the 
groom and keeper, went up the same afternoon—a 
Sunday it was—and we discovered a nest in the 
fern-bed, but could not go nearer than a few yards, 
as the sow stood at the entrance and forbade any 
further advance. The young pigs were seen a week 
or two afterwards, and they were all red-coloured, 
but with a few black up-and-down stripes. The two 
old boars gradually got to know my father, and 
they would take bread from his hand, and I have 
seen them rub their frothy snouts against his old 
shooting-jacket pocket when he has been sitting 
down, as if asking to be fed—which no doubt was 
their meaning. 
“ At one time there were a good many vipers and 
snakes on the property, but they gradually dis- 
appeared; and my father, attributing this to the 
presence of the boars, succeeded once in catching a 
full-grown viper, and, having enticed one of the 
boars into a shed, threw the viper down close to 
him. The viper, instead of attempting to escape, 
at once came to “attention,” and the boar, after a 
H 
