174 A NATURALIST IN WESTERN CHINA 



WILD PIG, " YEH CH'u " 



These animals are very common through western Szechuan 

 and scarcely less so in western Hupeh, doing great damage to 

 the crops of Irish potato and maize. Repeatedly have peasants 

 almost begged of me to go with them and hunt Pig, but I never 

 felt that a 12-bore and S.S.G.'s (my largest shot) were good 

 enough for a possible encounter with Mr. Pig. When the crops 

 are ripening, the peasants, on the approach of dusk and for 

 several hours afterwards, beat gongs and make all the noise 

 possible in order to scare these animals away. On moonlight 

 nights the din is maintained incessantly the whole night through, 

 and every traveller in Western China must have heard the weird 

 noises emanating from the crop-clad mountain-sides after dark. 

 The natives hunt these animals most assiduously and many 

 are killed annually. The flesh is esteemed and the killing of a 

 Wild Pig is an event for twofold rejoicing. 



These animals are nocturnal in their habits, lying up during 

 the daytime in brush and under ledges of rock. They often 

 build large mounds of dry, long grass and sleep under them 

 during the daytime. One day, whilst botanizing over an 

 elevated sloping plateau in Patung Hsien, I chanced on one of 

 these " houses " and was considerably startled by a loud, angry 

 grunt, and just got a glimpse of the black rump of a Pig as it 

 rushed out and plunged out of sight through some bushes. 

 Signs of Wild Pig are ever3rwhere abundant is the mountains, 

 and in any day's march acres of ground can be seen which 

 have been rooted over by these animals searching for succulent 

 starchy rhizomes and roots. Wa shan is a great place for Pig. 

 Hereabouts in 1908 Zappey witnessed the kilhng of one by 

 three Wild Dogs. He reached the carcass some five minutes 

 afterwards, but it had been disembowelled and rendered de- 

 cidedly nasty to look upon. 



I have repeatedly been told that the flesh of Wild Pig is 

 good eating. I have tried it several times, but consider it 

 decidedly strong and inferior flavoured. Maybe the young are 

 aU right. The only young one I ever saw looked reddish- 

 brown from a distance and was too far off to tell if the animal 

 was striped or uniformly coloured. 



