BEATING SUGAR-CANES FOR A HOG 



HOG-HUNTING, or pig-sticking, as the sport is more familiarly called, is practised all over 

 India. In Bengal, the paradise of pig-stickers, the spear, a bamboo of some eight or nine feet 

 in length, weighted with lead at the butt, is carried by the rider close to his knee, the point being 

 depressed, and driven into the pig as he comes up with it. In other parts of the country the 

 spear, which is shorter, is thrown at the pig, the rider thereby being left defenceless for the time 

 being. With a stout boar-pig, the chase is long and arduous, his pace when in good condition 

 being such as requires a very fleet horse to come up with him. From November to April the pig 

 fattens upon his beloved sugar-cane and becomes gross in the extreme. But when the canes 

 are off the ground, and he has to travel long distances in quest of food, he becomes low in flesh, 

 and correspondingly active. It is then that the pig-sticker delights in his favourite sport. In-. 

 the print before us a host of beaters, armed with long bamboo poles, has just driven him out of 

 his covert. The sportsmen, stationed at the corner of the field beneath a group of cocoa-palms,, 

 are awaiting him as he breaks into the open and bursts at full speed across the khidris, or 

 poppy-beds prepared for the opium crop. In the centre is seen the rustic plough, a mere 

 wedge of hard wood tipped with iron from which at the appearance of the pig the frightened 



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