THE PIO AND HIPPOPOTAMUS 



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WILD BOAR 



In its long, bristly hair and powerful loivcr tusks, the 'wild boar is a 'very different animal from its domesticated descendants 



the same standard. Thus the large-bodied, long-eared English breed, with a convex back, and 

 the small-bodied, short-eared Chinese breeds, with a concave back, when bred to the same 

 state of perfection, nearly resemble each other in the form of the head and body. This 

 result, it appears, is partly due to similar causes of change acting on the several races, and 

 partly to man breeding the pig for one sole purpose namely, for the greatest amount of 

 flesh and fat; so that selection has always tended towards one and the same end. With 

 most domestic animals the result of selection has been divergence of character; here it has 

 been convergence." 



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." 



