The Wild Ponies and Boars. 



accomplish. I can only here deal with the ornithology as I 

 have with the botany. I do not know either that the general 

 reader will lose anything by the treatment. A scientific know- 

 ledge is not so much needed as, first of all, a sympathy with 

 nature, and a love for all her forms of beauty. The great object 

 in life is not to know, but to feel. But, before we speak of. 

 the birds, let us correct some errors which are so common with 

 regard to the animals. It is quite a mistake to talk of wild 

 boars or wild ponies roaming over the Forest. There is not 

 now an animal here without an owner. The wild boars intro- 

 duced by Charles I., and others brought over some fifty 

 years ago, are seen only in their tame descendants sandy- 

 coloured, or " badger-pied," as they are called, which are turned 

 out into the Forest during the pannage months.* 



So, too, the Forest ponies never run wild, except in the 

 sense of being unbroken. Lath-legged, small-bodied, and 

 heavy-headed, but strong and hardy, living on nothing in the 

 winter but the furze, they are commonly said, without the 



* The Forest would afford a good field for deciding the controversy as 

 to whether our tame pigs are descended from the European Wild Boar. 

 (See Proceedings of the Zoological Society, 1861, p. 264; and Annals 

 and Magazine of Natural History, Third Series, vol. ix. p. 415.) Certain 

 it is that here are some breeds distinct in their markings. I must 

 not, too, forget to mention Coronella lavis (Boie), which is found in the 

 Forest, as also in Dorsetshire and Kent. This is the Coronella austriaca 

 of Laurenti, and afterwards the Coluber lavis of Lacepede. It might 

 be mistaken for the common viper (Pelias berus), but differs in not being 

 venomous, as also from the ringed snake (Nutrix torquata) in having 

 a fang at the hinder extremity of its jaws, the peculiarity of the genus 

 Coronella. It feeds on lizards, which its fang enables it to hold ; drinks a 

 great deal of water; and Dr. Giinther, of the British Museum, to whom I 

 am indebted for the above information, tells me that it crawls up the furze 

 aM low bushes to lick the rain off the leaves. For a list of the Lepidoptera 

 of the New Forest see Appendix IV. 



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