loo EXTINCT BRITISH ANIMALS. 



preliminaay " chop " or two, dashed at it. The 

 viper seemed to strike him two or three times on 

 the snout, but the boar, putting one foot on him, 

 pulled him to pieces in a few seconds, and certainly 

 did not suffer any subsequent inconvenience from 

 the viper's attacks. Jack and Dick (the two black 

 boars) died natural deaths, and their successors de- 

 generated in size, and seemed gradually to become 

 tame and spiritless ; they have been extinct for 

 forty years or so. The old red boar lived for some 

 years confined in a large yard, and at enmity with 

 everyone ; a more untameable animal there could 

 not be. He came to an undignified end, being fed 

 and kUled like his tame brethren. After death he 

 was skinned and stuffed, and when I last saw him 

 he was in the lumber room at the Priory, near- 

 Derby, and, like the celebrated wolf killed by the 

 deerhound Gelert, he was "tremendous stiU in 

 death." The head of one of his grandsons is or was 

 in the Derby Museum, and a formidable-looking 

 object it is, with immense tusks. This descendant 

 died from eating a poisoned rat which had been 

 thoughtlessly thrown to him. 



" The very last of the Sydnope boars was shot in 

 the year 1837, and the fact was recorded in verse, 

 by one of the party, very huniorously and success- 

 fully." 



The exact date of the extinction of the Wild Boar 

 in Britain is uncertain. 



There were Wild Boars in Durham in 1531-33. 

 In the Accounts of the Bursar of the Monastery of 



