256 



CASSELL'S POPULAR NATURAL HISTORT. 



way, they make a terrific clattering with their teeth, and stop and examine the object of their alarm. 

 When they have ascertained that there is no danger, they continue their route without further delay ; 

 but if a huntsman should venture to attack them when they are thus assembled in large numbers, he 

 is sure to be surrounded by multitudes and torn to pieces by their tusks, if he is so unwise as to 

 neglect his only chance of escape, which consists in climbing a tree, and thus getting fairly out of 

 their reach. The smaller bands are by no means equally courageous, aud always take to flight at the 

 first attack. 



In Guiana, Sonnini was surrounded by a herd of peccaries, exasperated at the havoc made among 

 them by the fusils of himself and his companions. Betaking himself to a tree, he beheld at his ease 

 how they encouraged, by their grunts and by rubbing their snouts together, those that were wounded from 

 the shots above, still maintaining their ground with bristles erect and eyes fiery with rage. They sometimes 

 stood an incessant fusilade of two or three hours before they quitted the battle-field and left their dead 



to the conquerors. After such encounters comes the festival of the travellers. A great gridiron so 

 to speak of sticks, fastened in the ground, and some three feet in height, with numerous small branches 

 laid on it in a transverse direction, is got ready. On this sylvan cooking-apparatus the pieces of peccary 

 pork are broiled over a slow fire kept up during the night. Sonnini dwells enthusiastically on these 

 forest feasts, to which he looks back with regret. 



THE COLLARED PECCARY.* 



THERE is another species. D' Azara appears to have been the first who distinguished the two ; they 

 were both confounded by Linnaeus under the common name of SIM Tajacu. The latter is not so thick 

 and stout an animal as the former. 



* Dicotjlea torquatus. 



