The Wart- Hog 



5*9 



Orange River. 1 It is now rare in Zululand and Amatongaland, but common 

 enough in Swaziland, Gazaland, and the Transvaal east of longitude 31°. 

 Thence it extends up the east coast through Portuguese East Africa, 

 Manicaland, the Barue country, Mashona and Matabeleland,- and across 

 the Zambesi as far as I have travelled. It shuns densely forested tracts, 

 but is partial to thick thorn-jungle and thin forest with open glades and 

 rough stony dongas. Wart-hogs usually prefer dry and somewhat sandy 

 tracts of country, hence the statements made by Heuglin that they habitually 

 repose on swampy ground, or even in water, has been generally discredited. 

 In 1896-97, however, when elephant hunting in Northern Chiringoma, 

 Portuguese East Africa, I obtained strong confirmatory evidence that his 

 statements were not altogether unfounded. In December and January the 

 great Urema plains were nothing but a vast marsh, in which, at all hours 

 of the day, wart-hogs were incredibly numerous, far distant from the edge 

 of the forest, where the rising ground was dry. They may, of course, have 

 left these drier retreats during the night, but I could not satisfy myself on 

 this point, and came to the conclusion that they seldom left the marsh, 

 contenting themselves with lying up in the comparatively dry patches 

 which occurred at intervals. Generally speaking, however, they prefer to 

 lie in wooded dongas or thick patches of jungle, from which they emerge 

 in the evenings and feed throughout the night. They are very partial to 

 a mud-bath, and when on elephant-spoor one day, I came on an old boar 

 lying on his back in a mud-hole with all four feet in the air. Their food 

 consists of roots, berries, and grass, and I have seem them eating the young 

 shoots of the borassus and raphia palms. At one time I believed that 

 they burrowed in the ground, but am now convinced to the contrary ; they 

 will occupy old ant-bear holes, and, if necessary, enlarge them, but I can 



1 Although wart-hogs are not now found in Cape Colony, it seems doubtful whether the range of 

 these animals did not extend westward from Natal, through KarTraria, to the eastern frontier of the old 

 Cape Colony.— Ed. 



■' It is found also in various parts of Bcchuanaland.— Ed. 



