PIGS 



HUNTING THE HILL PIG 

 BY E. GORDON REEVES 



Those who have hunted the hill forests of Ceylon for 

 a succession of years will know that pig is a very variable 

 quantity. In the lower lands and plains of the low 

 country proper the quantity is more or less fixed, except 

 when the occasional scourge of murrain falls and almost 

 wipes them out, but I have never known murrain to touch 

 the hills. 



Variation in quantity is due to another cause in these 

 hills I speak particularly of the hills of Matale East 

 and that is migration, for, just as the elk migrate more 

 or less annually, so do the pigs, but the great migratory 

 event is the immigration of, not only pigs, but many other 

 species of both birds and animals in Ceylon, to the hills 

 when that peculiar plant the nilloo is in flower, which 

 occurs about once in seven to ten years. 



There are always pig, more or less, in the hill forests, 

 but when the nilloo blooms the hog hunters have a " bumper " 

 time indeed, for no doubt at that time recruits arrive from 

 the lowlands to swell the numbers. 



I have certainly killed, at such a time, many pig which 

 could be no other than lowland folk, long legged, lean 

 shanked, hairless creatures, very different to the real thick- 

 set, broad, bristly pig of the mountains, and of a much less 

 truculent nature. 



Hog hunting has been my particular diversion for the 

 last thirty years, and I must confess it still retains first 

 place, for the hog is a most gallant foeman, and my ad- 

 miration, not to say fear, of him is of no diminishing 

 quantity. 



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