WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. 147 



with great, I could not help thinking of James Fitzjames' gallant 

 stand, when, beset by Roderick and his clansmen, 



" His back against a rock he bore, 

 And firmly placed his foot before : 

 ' Come one, come all ! this rock shall fly 

 From its firm base as 1 soon as I ' " 



The boar had chosen his ground with the utmost strategic skill : 

 the instinct of a brute is ever sharpened by danger, and self-pre- 

 servation suggests shifts that often baffle the ingenuity of the 

 cleverest human reason. Look at the hare, for instance, retreating 

 at break of day to her form ! what jumps and gyrations does she 

 practise to elude discovery ; and, when sinking in the chase, how 

 marvellous are her wiles and doubles, running the hot foil and 

 squatting suddenly, so as often to puzzle the most observant 

 huntsman and the keenest-nosed hounds ? Or, look at the shifts 

 of a deer in his last extremity : he takes soil, and carefully sink- 

 ing his whole body, even to the tips of his brow-antlers, beneath 

 the wave, his nostrils alone being exposed above the surface, he 

 will remain immersed, like a crocodile, for a considerable time ; 

 nor will he allow a leaf or a twig to touch him, lest it should 

 convey a taint to the air and reveal the secret of his whereabouts 

 to the inquisitive foe. A fox, too, has been known to practise 

 this very artifice, in addition to scores of others improvised in the 

 moment of distress. 



Surely this is a faculty very closely allied to reason ! And 

 who shall say where one begins and the other ends ; or who shall 

 divide them? That boar, finding his wind and strength failing 

 him, must have reflected on his condition, and deduced from it the 

 necessity of immediately choosing Vantage ground on which to 

 make his last stand, and await in the most favourable position the 

 attack of his enemy. Is not this precisely what the ablest general 

 would have done under like pressure ? But the tactics of the one 



