78 EXTINCT BRITISH ANIMALS. 



here in turns. Figures of the wild boar are found 

 on Roman monuments in England ; Pennant has 

 noticed one such at Ribchester, formerly a famous 

 Roman station. "It is supposed," he says, "to 

 have been an honorary inscription to Severus and 

 Caracalla, by the repetition of the address. It was 

 done by a vexillatio of one of the legions quartered 

 here. A stone fixed in the wall of a small house 

 near the church gives room to suppose that it 

 belonged to the twentieth. The inscription is 

 LEG. XX. W. FEC, and on one side is the 

 sculpture of a Boar, an animal I have in two 

 other instances observed attendant on the inscrip- 

 tions made by the famous Legio vicesaima valens 

 victriw."* 



Nor should we omit to notice the Roman altar 

 which was found in 1749 near Stanhope, in the 

 bishopric of Durham, usually referred to as the Wear- 

 dale altar, and dedicated by a grateful Roman prefect 

 to the god Sylvanus for the capture of an enormous 

 Boar, which many of .his predecessors had in vain 

 attempted to destroy. On this altar was discovered 

 the following inscription : — " Bylvano invicto sacrum 

 . . . . ob Aprum eosimice formce captum, quern multi 

 antecessores ejus prwdari non potuerunt." A similar 

 altar, also dedicated to Sylvanus by the hunters of 

 Banna, was found at Birdoswald, in Northumber- 

 land, t 



* " Tour to Alston Moor," 1801, p. 93. See also Horsley, " Bri- 

 tannia Romana, or the Roman Antiquities of Britain," folio, 1732. 

 t Wright, " The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon," pp. 207, 267. 



