THE PIG AND HIPPOPOTAMUS 279 
will be found a most tough and courageous adversary, capable and willing to defend itself 
stoutly against all foes. “They are,” says Mr. F. Vaughan Kirby, who has had much 
experience in hunting these animals, “expert swimmers and swift of foot, and can get over 
the roughest ground at a'great pace. There is no pluckier beast in Africa than a bush-pig, 
and even a leopard will hesitate before attacking a full-grown boar. Like all wild creatures, 
they have an instinctive dread of man, and will always make their escape from him if possible; 
but if surrounded or wounded and brought to bay, they appear to accept the situation with 
stolid imperturbability, and die fighting with rare pluck, against all odds, grim and silent to 
the last. . . . Face to face in the middle of a ‘ fast’ bush, and only a Swazi ‘ stabbing-assegai’ 
with which to kill him, . . . I have seen an old boar, after receiving nine thrusts from those 
terrible weapons, two of which were still fast in him, make a charge that scattered us. 
like chaff, and in three consecutive lunges lame one of our number for life, and disembowel 
two of the finest ‘ pig-dogs’ I ever hunted with. In such encounters a boar inflicts terrible 
wounds with his teeth, as well as with his tusks.’ Few men care to face a wart-hog on foot. 
Another bush-pig is 
found in Madagascar, and is 
known as EDWARDS’ BuUSH- 
PIG. Its habits are very 
similar to those of its brethren 
in the neighbouring continent 
of Africa. 
THE BABIRUSA 
Quitting the true pigs, 
‘we come now to perhaps the 
very strangest and most 
Singular of all the great 
tribe of swine. This is the 
BABIRUSA, that curious and 
grotesque creature found in 
the island of Celebes, in the 
Malay Archipelago. The 
name Babirusa signifies “ pig- . Wile Z 
deer.” It is of course a HEAD OF MALE WART-HOG 
misnomer, and the animal Se SRS Maa ss ; ls side of oh ‘ eee 
. . . rofile Showin, the targe conical wart: rowths on the stade of the face so characteristic o 
has no kinship whatever with fi ad = , Bele aici fe 
the cervine race. The babi- ‘ 
rusa is a wild swine, having a dark slate-grey skin, very sparsely covered with hair along 
the ridge of the spine. This skin is very extraordinarily wrinkled. The ears are much 
‘smaller than is the case with other members of the swine group, while the tail is short, 
straight, and sacks any semblance of tuft. The females have small tusks. In the boars the 
tusks are most singularly and abnormally developed. From the upper jaw, instead of curving 
from the side of the lips, the tusks grow from the centre of the muzzle, penetrate right 
through the skin, and curve backwards often till they touch the forehead. The lower tusks 
have also a strong curve, but are not so long as those of the upper jaw Although thus 
superabundantly provided with tushes, the babirusa is, as regards the rest of its teeth, less 
well off, having only thirty-four, as against the forty-four of the European wild boar. In their 
habits these singular pigs much resemble other wild swine, going in herds and frequenting 
forest, jungle, and the banks of rivers. They are excellent swimmers. The young are, unlike 
other wild swine in the infant state, unstriped. These animals are often found domesticated 
about the dwellings of native chiefs in Celebes. The weight of a good male is as much as 
128 lbs.; height at shoulder, 274 inches. The longest tusk recorded measures 17 inches 
