ioo EXTINCT BRITISH ANIMALS. 



preliminary " chop " or two, dashed at it. The 

 viper seemed to strike him two or three times on 

 the snout, but the boar, putting one foot on him, 

 pulled him to pieces in a few seconds, and certainly 

 did not suffer any subsequent inconvenience from 

 the viper's attacks. Jack and Dick (the two black 

 boars) died natural deaths, and their successors de- 

 generated in size, and seemed gradually to become 

 tame and spiritless ; they have been extinct for 

 forty years or so. The old red boar lived for some 

 years confined in a large yard, and at enmity with 

 everyone ; a more untam cable animal there could 

 not be. He came to an undignified end, being fed 

 and killed like his tame brethren. After death he 

 was skinned and stuffed, and when I last saw him 

 he was in the lumber room at the Priory, near 

 Derby, and, like the celebrated wolf killed by the 

 deerhound Gelert, he was ''tremendous still in 

 death." The head of one of his grandsons is or was 

 in the Derby Museum, and a formidaKfe -looking 

 object it is, with immense tusks. This descendant 

 died from eating a poisoned rat which had been 

 thoughtlessly thrown to him. 



" The very last of the Sydnope boars was shot in 

 the year 1837, and the fact was recorded in verse, 

 by one of the party, very humorously and success- 

 fully." 



The exact date of the extinction of the Wild Boar 

 in Britain is uncertain. 



There were Wild Boars in Durham in 1531-33. 

 Tn the Accounts of the Bursar of the Monastery of 



