WILD FIGS. 21 



The increase of the wild pigs in pre-settlement days was very 

 remarkable. Nearly every sealing and whaling vessel which visited 

 these Islands between 1800 and 1830 took away quantities of pork 

 as part of the cargo to Sydney. Dr. Monro, who accompanied 

 Mr. Tuckett on his trip through Otago in 1844, speaking of the 

 hill country south-west of Saddle Hill, says, " There is a famous 

 cover for pigs, too, between the upper part of the Teiari [Taieri] 

 Valley and the sea. The whalers come up the river in their boats 

 and kill great numbers of pigs here." 



After settlement commenced and people started to cultivate 

 certain areas and to run sheep, wild pigs came to be looked 

 upon as animals to be killed out. Drummond tells us that "they 

 multiplied astonishingly, and enormous numbers assembled in un- 

 inhabited valleys far from the settlements. At Wangapeka Valley, 

 in the Nelson Province, Dr. Hochstetter in 1860 saw several miles 

 ploughed up by pigs. Their extermination was sometimes con- 

 tracted for by experienced hunters, and he states that three men 

 in twenty months, on an area of 250,000 acres, killed no fewer than 

 twenty-five thousand pigs, and pledged themselves to kill fifteen 

 thousand more." 



At the present time wild pigs are still common in nearly all 

 scrub or thin bush country which is not too near settlement, and 

 to those who like the element of danger in their hunting they afford 

 good sport. They are usually pursued by dogs, often specially 

 trained for the purpose, which after a time succeed in bailing up 

 their prey. The pigs prefer to take their stand in the hollow of a 

 tree or some such locality, and an old boar will often do considerable 

 damage to the dogs before he is despatched. The orthodox manner 

 is to run in and stab him; but a man without a gun has little 

 chance if he ventures to close quarters with a bailed-up boar. 



As to the food of the wild pigs, they root up the ground wherever 

 the bracken fern (Pteris aquilina var. esculenta) is found, the 

 starchy rhizomes furnishing abundant nutriment. They are also 

 very fond of the thick rootstocks of spear-grasses (Aciphylla) and 

 other umbelliferous plants, and have largely eaten out these plants 

 over large areas. In the Chatham Islands they have been mainly 

 responsible for exterminating the fine native forget-me-not, known 

 as the Chatham Island lily. In the Auckland Islands they have 

 destroyed great areas of Bitlbinella and PI euro phi /Hum. 



