THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
“On my return from a day’s sport after sambar near the small and out- 
of-the-way village of Kan, I came upon a number of what first appeared to 
me to be ant-hills, but were really grass heaps. They were in the form of 
thatch, made of teak leaves, kine grass, and twigs, closely interwoven so as 
to be impervious to rain. These so-called little ‘ pig huts’ are two feet thick 
in thatch, three and a half feet high, five feet in length, oval in shape, with 
one small exit, and in the majority of cases partially closed. On this occa- 
sion there were about ten or fifteen in number in close proximity to each 
other, about twelve to fifteen feet apart.” 
In such huts the sows hide their litter until the sucklings are two or three 
weeks old, carefully closing the entrance whenever they leave them. An- 
other correspondent reported that in Ceylon he had seen similar huts built 
by two pigs, usually boars, one lying down and the other plucking up 
grass and so forth, and piling it over its companion. ‘‘Their occupation 
does not seem to last more than a day or two, and then only during wet 
weather. I have once known a wounded pig to take refuge in a hut.” 
Their food is not wholly vegetable, for they seize on worms, 
mollusks, lizards, snakes, and anything else fleshly that falls 
in their way, including carrion, and so are of service as scaven- 
gers. Along the seashore they fatten on shellfish, and in Assam 
dig up a kind of fish which in the dry season buries itself in mud. 
An old boar will stand thirty-five to forty inches tall, and may 
weigh two hundred and fifty pounds. He is impervious in 
wiry bristles, and armed with enormous canines (tusks), of 
which the upper pair turn up as soon as they leave the jaw, 
and the lower curl upward beside them; and the latter are kept 
as sharp as knives by grinding against the upper pair. The 
lower tusks may measure ten inches in curved length, but two 
thirds of this is rooted within the jaw. Such an animal must 
Pig Stick- always have been an object to tempt the prowess of 
ing. adventurous sportsmen, and legend does not go 
back far enough to tell of the beginning of boar hunting with 
big dogs. In England,"*® and on the continent of Europe, 
the custom has always been to follow the hounds afoot spear 
in hand; and when the dogs — predecessors of our “great 
Danes” — brought the animal to bay, to kill it by a javelin 
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