THE WILD BOAR. 99 



the recipient met me unexpectedly and no refuge 

 was near. Brought up in this wUd country, I 

 carried a gun when very young, and as I never went 

 into the woods without one, I suppose I felt com- 

 paratively safe. I recollect that one of our grooms, 

 when making a short cut through a fern bed which 

 existed on one part of the property, was unexpectedly 

 charged by a sow, but he escaped by the hardest 

 running. From her manner it was evident that she 

 had young ones, and my father, myself, and the 

 groom and keeper, went up the same afternoon — a 

 Sunday it was — and we discovered a nest in the 

 fern-bed, but could not go nearer than a few yards, 

 ■as the sow stood at the entrance and forbade any 

 further advance. The young pigs were seen a week 

 'Or two afterwards, and they were all red-coloured, 

 but with a few black up-and-down stripes. The two 

 ■old boars gradually got to know my father, and 

 they would take bread from his hand, and I have 

 seen them rub their frothy snouts against his old 

 shooting-jacket pocket when he has been sitting 

 down, as if asking to be fed — ^which no doubt was 

 their meaning. 



" At one time there were a good many vipers and 

 snakes on the property, but they gradually dis- 

 appeared; and my father, attributing this to the 

 presence of the boars, succeeded once in catching a 

 full-grown viper, and, having enticed one of the 

 boars into a shed, threw the viper down close to 

 him. The viper, instead of attempting to escape, 

 at once came to "attention," and the boar, after a 



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