THE WILD BOAR. 97 



These " boar-franks," it would seem, were at one 

 time not uncommon in parts of Suffolk. The 

 anonymous author of the " History and Antiquities 

 of the Ancient Villa of Wheatfield in the County 

 of Suffolk" (first printed in 4to in 1758, and re- 

 published in the second volume of Dodsley's 

 "Fugitive Pieces," pp. 77-115), referring to the 

 state of the parish and the manners and pursuits 

 of the inhabitants, remarks : — " The prevailing taste 

 runs much upon building temples to Cloacina and 

 menageries for Wild Boars ; structures in them- 

 selves beautiful, but at the expense of that noble 

 Roman Way, the Via Icenorum, that leads through 

 the parish, which they narrow and obumbrate." 



At Chartley Park, Staffordshire — where, three 

 hundred years ago, as we learn from Erdeswick, wild 

 swine roamed at large — the present Earl Ferrers 

 proposed to reintroduce these animals, having been 

 presented, with a boar by Mr. W. J. Evelyn, of 

 Wotton House, near Dorking, and with a sow by 

 Mr. F. H. Salvin, of Whitmoor House, near Guild 

 ford. The proposed experiment, however, failed, for 

 the boar died on the road, from the heat of the 

 weather, and the sow not long afterwards, from an 

 accident. 



In Derbyshire a similar attempt at reintroduction 

 was made by the late Sir Francis Darwin, to whose 

 son, Mr. E. L. Darwin, we are indebted for the 

 following graphic account of the experiment : — 



"My father (the late Sir Francis Darwin) pos- 

 sessed an estate in Derbyshire, which consisted of 



