HUNTING & SHOOTING IN CEYLON 



an open space, and in the middle of this was a pig feeding 

 on lotus stems, so busily engaged that I was easily enabled 

 to get to a tree on the very edge of the water, from cover 

 of which I gave him a tickler through the ribs. He fell 

 floundering, but got up and struggled towards the far bank, 

 only falling dead to two more shots just before he reached 

 dry land. Whilst we were looking at the corpse another 

 pig started out from a farther part of the swamp, and went 

 tearing full speed across an open plain of grass bordering 

 the swamp, passing across our front at a distance of about 

 60 yards. I slipped up my Lyman aperture back-sight, 

 and " drawing the bead " of my " Savage " on the fleeing 

 piggy, bowled him over like a rabbit. These were swamp 

 pigs, of no particular size, and their small but sharp tusks 

 were stained jet black, no doubt from constant grubbing in 

 black mud. During a later visit to the island I bagged 

 another pig, this time with the " Paradox." 



I was sitting on a stump, under a shady tree, about 

 5 P.M., on the edge of the open grass plain where I shot 

 the pig mentioned above, waiting for anything which might 

 appear, and had not been there long when a pig came out 

 of the opposite jungle and began grubbing in the grass 

 near the jungle edge. The distance was well over 100 

 yards, and the grass there hid about half his body, so I went 

 for a stalk, lying down, squirming, and sometimes crawling 

 across the bare open space which here was very sparsely 

 grass-covered, until I reached the cover of a tiny depression, 

 about 60 yards from the pig, where I was able to sit up a 

 bit. Waiting until " piggy " offered me a good broadside 

 view, I fired at his shoulder with the 5O-yards sight up, 

 and knocked him over as dead as mutton nothing to be 

 particularly proud of certainly, but I had enjoyed a stalk 

 across a piece of quite open ^ground, ending in a " dead in 



