52 THE MASTER OF GAME 



They drop their lesses (excrements) as other 

 swine do, according to their pasture being hard 

 or soft. 



But men do not take them to the curée nor 

 are they judged as of the hart or other beasts of 

 venery. 



A boar can with great pain live twenty years ; 

 he never casts his teeth nor his tusks nor loses 

 them unless by a stroke.^ The boar's grease is 

 good as that of other tame sv/ine, and their flesh 

 also. Some men say that by the foreleg of a boar 

 one can know how old he is, for he will have as 

 many small pits in the forelegs as he has years, 

 but of this I make no affirmation. The sows lead 

 about their pigs with them till they have farrowed 

 twice and no longer, and then they chase their 

 first pigs away from them for by that time they 

 be two years old and three Marches counting the 

 March in which they were farrowed.^ In short 

 they are like tame sows, excepting that they farrow 

 but once in a year and the tame sows farrow twice. 

 When they be wroth they run at both men and 

 hounds and other beasts as (does) the wild boar 

 and if they cast down a man they abide longer 

 upon him than doeth a boar, but she cannot slay 



1 At this point G. de F., p. 6i, adds : " One says of all biting 

 beasts the trace, and of red beasts foot or view, and one can 

 call both one or the other the paths or the fues." 



2 See Appendix : Wild Boar. 



