34 MODERN PIG-STICKING 



Dozens of hog are lost every year through noise. 

 Either the shikaries, the cooHes on the Hne, the 

 syces or the spears themselves are always making 

 an uproar. It is difficult to stop. 



Simson states his conviction that pig are 

 frequently deaf. I have been on the look-out for 

 this, but have not found it to be so. 



If you have never tried, put your ear on the 

 ground when horses are galloping, even a long way 

 off. Their hoofs sound like musketry. 



With all wild animals the development of their 

 various senses is carefully balanced. They would 

 otherwise overrun the country or die out, as the 

 balance lay for or against them. A pig's keen 

 hearing is, in my opinion, counterbalanced by an 

 almost entire absence of his sense of smell. 



Sense of Smell, — I do not think pig have any 

 more sense of smell than any of the large carnivorae. 

 I have never found any signs of it. I am sure 

 neither tiger nor panther can smell. How often 

 do not these animals, no rogues, but honest-minded 

 beasts, pass close to a tied-up buffalo, out of sight, 

 but certainly within smell, and never detect him ? 

 When sitting up on the ground in a bush for panther, 

 I have twice now had them in the same bush with 

 me, and detected it only by the rumbling of their 

 guts : they had never smelt me. The stomachs 

 of these brutes are constantly rumbling ; I suppose 

 they are empty. 



A third time a panther and I were in the same 

 bush, though neither of us knew it. My goat would 

 not bleat, so in desperation I raised a most heart- 

 rending " baa." The panther fled with a dismal 

 " woof." 



