350 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
manors within the limits and extent of the royal forest of Rook- 
woode. Moreover, he granted to him and to his heirs for ever, 
among other immunities and privileges, the full right and power 
to levy every year the Rhyne Toll, which has already been 
described. 
Such is the story of the Chetwode tradition, which has 
descended unquestioned from time immemorial, and received, 
about forty years ago, an apparently singular confirmation. 
Within a mile of Chetwode Manor-house there existed a large 
mound, surrounded by a ditch, and bearing the name of the 
“Boar’s Pond.” It had long been overgrown with gorse and 
brushwood, when, about the year 1810, the tenant, to whose farm 
it belonged, wishing to bring it into cultivation, began to fill up 
the ditch by levelling the mound. Having lowered the latter 
about four feet, he found some bones, supposed to be those of an 
enormous boar. Probably this was the spot where it was killed, 
the earth around having been heaped over it so as to form the 
ditch and mound. The space formerly thus occupied can still be 
traced. It extends about thirty feet in length and eighteen in 
width, and the field containing it is yet called the ‘“Boar’s Head 
Field.” The jaw and other portions of the skeleton are now in 
the possession of Sir George Chetwode, Bart., the present lord of 
the manor.* 
There is a somewhat similar tradition at Boarstall, which 
stands within the limits of Bernewood Forest, as Chetwode does 
within those of Rookwoode.t These forests formerly adjoined, 
and formed a favourite hunting district of Edward the Confessor 
and his successors, who had a palace or hunting-lodge at Burghill 
(Brill), where the two forests met. 
That the mere killing of a Boar should be so richly rewarded 
may appear incredible. But many a Wild Boar of old was so 
powerful and ferocious that he would attack a lion; while such 
was his stubborn courage that he would never yield till actually 
killed or disabled. The classic reader may here recall to mind 
the celebrated tale, in Greek mythology, of the Calydonian Boar 
that ravaged the fields of Autolia, and was ultimately slain by 
** A jaw-bone submitted to Prof. Flower was identified by him as that of 
a horse, and two large teeth proved to be molars of Hlephas primigenius. 
} This tradition, with some remarks on the former occurrence of the Wild 
Boar in Buckinghamshire, will be found in Harting’s ‘Extinct British 
Animals,’ p. 80. 
