.*/.. THE WILD BOAR. 



paratively recent period. In Strati's ' Sports and Pastimes 

 of the People of England are given two engravings illus- 

 trative of this subject: one from a manuscript of the ninth 

 century, respecting a Saxon chieftain, attended by his 

 huntsmen and a couple of hounds, pursuing the wild swine 

 in a forest ; and the other showing the manner in which 

 the animal was attacked in the fourteenth century. There 

 is a famous old work called the 'Book of St. Alban's,' from 

 having been first printed in I486 at the Abbey there, which 

 contains the following : 



" Wheresoever ye fare by frith or by fell, 

 My dear child take heed how Tristam do you tell 

 How many manner beastis of venery there were ; 

 Listen to your dame, and she shall yon lere : 

 Four manner beastis of venery there are ; 

 The first of them is the hart, the second is the hare, 

 The boar is one of tho, the wolf and not one mo. 

 And where that ye come in plain or in place, 

 I shall you tell which been beasts of enchase ; 

 One of them is the buck, another is the doe, 

 The fox, and the marteron, and the wild roe : 

 And ye shall, my dear child, other beasts all, 

 Whereso ye find them, Rascal ye shall them call, 

 In frith or in fell, or in forest, I you tell 



In a well-known old French treatise ' On Hunting and 

 Falconry,' written in the sixteenth century, one of the 

 chapters is devoted to the subject of the properties and 

 mode of hunting the boar. The animal, the writer says, 

 ought not to be accounted among beasts to be chased by 

 common hunting dogs, but is fit game rather for mastiffs 

 and their like. Dogs, he argues, accustomed to hunt the 

 boar, soon lose their delicacy of smell, and their capacity 

 of tracking other game, from being in this sport accustomed 

 to see the object of their pursuit so near them, and, as he 

 expresses it, to have a strong sensation of their beast. Be- 

 sides, the ferocity and power of the animal are such, that 

 in our author's opinion, it is exposing dogs, valuable on 



