96 EXTINCT BRITISH ANIMALS. 



were removed to Morden, a few miles distant. 

 The Russian breed was wilder and more ferocious 

 than the French. The litters, which averaged from 

 10 to 12, were not interfered with, but ran wild with 

 their parents. They were not hunted but caught 

 in nets or shot. Writing to a mutual friend in 

 September, 1879, Mr. Drax says : "I fenced them in 

 with a wood paling in the wood where I built the 

 present tower, and used to shoot them. The latter 

 part of the time I kept them at Morden Park, and 

 bred a lot of them, feeding them on turnips and corn. 

 They were savage and troublesome, however, to keep 

 within bounds, and I therefore killed them. They 

 were good eating when fed upon corn." 



Scott, in his " British Field Sports," the second 

 edition of which was published in 1820, says, "Several 

 Wild Boars of this accidental kind have flourished 

 within my memory ; in particular two in the woods 

 between Mersey Island and Colchester, in Essex, 

 which many years since were the terror of that 

 neighbourhood for a considerable time, and stood 

 many a gallant hunt." i 



In olden times the enclosure in which the Boars 

 used to be fattened was termed a "Boar-frank." 

 Shakespeare uses the word in the Second Part of 

 Henry IV." : 



" Doth the old boar feed in the old frank ?" 



And in one of the Household Books of Lord William 

 Howard, of Naworth Castle, Cumberland, under date 

 Sept. 25, 1622, is an entry of payment 



" To Rob. Burthom for mending a boar-frank .... iiijd." 



