242 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Oct. 17 1889. 



he §tgortmi\mi ^otttht 



AUTUMN THOUGHTS. 



r pH!B summer has fled with ita garments of green, 

 And the pencil of autumn is painting the scene 

 Upon hillside and forest with colors that glow. 

 Ere old winter sends down his drop-curtain of snow. 



How brilliant the picture our eyes may behold. 



With the maples all flaming with scarlet and gold; 



*Tis as if in regret for once breaking the chain. 



Our New Eugland had donned royal colors again! 



Now the oaks are all gorgeous in purple and brown, 



The bright gold of the beech to the hills lends a crown, 



While the background of hemlocks, that once looked so green* 



Seems black from the contrast to all this gay sheen. 



Still a few faded asters are left by the brook. 



While the harebell yet lingers in some sheltered nook; 



But the brightness and beauty of flowers are gone, 



And the berries are red on the alder and thorn. 



I have likened my picture to some mimic scene 



Which is set on the stage, the great actions between, 



For it makes a bright moment of happy repose, 



Ere the drama of life draws at last to a close. 



Would that such brilliant hours may come in one day, 



When bright morn and hot noontide have faded away, 



And our autumn of life be as sunny and clear 



As the picture which natures painting us here . Von W. 



HOW WE SLEW THE GREAT BOAR. 



THERE lias long teen a controversy among natural- 

 ists as to whether die wild boar and the domestic 

 pig are two different species, or merely one and the same 

 species under different developments. So far, the former 

 theory has been universally adopted in books on natural 

 history, and the zoologists invariably class the wild boar 

 as a separate species and under a separate name. Sus 

 scrofa. They assume it to be a distinct kind of pig, like 

 the peccary of South America or the indigenous pigs of 

 the tropical islands of the Indian Ocean, which are totally 

 dissimilar, both in habits and appearance, from the do- 

 mestic porker. Yet there is absolute proof, in one very 

 conspicuous instance, at all events, that they are all mis- 

 taken. 



"When Captain James Cook, the celebrated English 

 navigator, rediscovered New Zealand in 1774— it having 

 been discovered by Tasman more than a century before, 

 but never visited in the interval by any European — he 

 found no animals of any kind in the islands, nor could he 

 gather from the natives any idea of quadrupeds. They 

 were cannibals living on one another, and on fish, birds 

 and vegetables when the supply of human flesh ran short. 

 They had certainly never seen a quadruped of any sort. 

 Captain Cook put ashore a number of pigs and goats, 

 which he had brought with him for the purpose, and on 

 revisiting the country two years later was pleased to 

 learn that they had increased considerably, the natives 

 apparently being too much afraid of them to molest 

 them. 



Seventy years passed away after that before New Zea- 

 land was occupied as a British colony, and when the first 

 settlers arrived in 1S39, they found wild pigs, having all 

 the characteristics of the wild boar of Westphalia, in 

 possession of the mountain fastnesses and the forest 

 depths; while pork was a favorite food of the natives, 

 though they still had a hankering for "long pig," as they 

 called a missionary or a sailor, when properly cooked in 

 one of their nice, clean stone ovens. 



It is now 115 years since Captain Cook landed his pigs: 

 and the wild boar of New Zealand , the direct descendant 

 of these miserable animals which had been cooped up on 

 board ship for many months, is now a ferocious monster, 

 a terror to men, horses and dogs, and monarch of the im- 

 penetrable gullies which he loves to haunt. The increase 

 of the European population, who now number nearly 

 700,000, and the occupation of all the lower or more open 

 lands, has only had the effect of making the wild boar 

 wilder than ever, by driving him into the mountains or 

 bush, and compelling him to lead a purely savage life, 

 rooting his subsistence out of the sterile soil "or devouring 

 everything eatable that he can get hold of. Yet, not-, 

 withstanding the incessant war that is waged against' 

 him, he holds his own very well and is in no more dan- 

 ger of being exterminated than the tigers of India are. 

 The sheep farmers, in fact, only hold their own against 

 him by organizing raids upon him in his own territory 

 and offering rewards for all the tails that are brought in 

 by shepherds and hunters. The mountainous interior of 

 New Zealand is mostly covered with tussock grass, an 

 excellent summer pasture for sheep, intermingled with 

 " Spaniards," a terribly sharp-leaved plant, somewhat 

 akin to the yuccas of the Rocky Mountains, which has a 

 huge succulent root like a parsnip, a foot or two long, and 

 as thick as a man's leg. This root is the favorite food of 

 the wild boars, and to find it they will often root over 

 miles and miles of grass country, leaving it very much 

 like a plowed field, with nothing for the sheep to eat. 

 They never attack full-grown, active sheep, which can 

 easily get away from them, but they make havoc among 

 the lambs, while if they come across a cast sheep or a 

 " crawler," unable to keep up with the others, they tram- 

 ple it down and soon leave nothing but some bones and 

 shreds of wool. 



New Zealand is a grand country for sport of various 

 kinds, if you only know how to go to work, and it has 

 this great charm, that there are no drawbacks in the way 

 of climate, insects, venomous creatures of any sort, or 

 heavy expenses. It is a temperate, healthy, exquisitely 

 beautiful and very cheap country; and the sportsman 

 can enjoy himself to the utmost without taking too much 

 out of himself and without exhausting a moderate purse. 

 There is no better sport, perhaps, in its way than boar 

 hunting. Of course it cannot be got near the cities, and 

 to have anything like a good time at it you should either 

 go and stay with some friend at a sheep station in the 

 hills or else organize an expedition and make a week of 

 it under canvas. 



There are several ways of hunting the wild boar, the 

 most approved being to find him in his lair with dogs, 

 and then, having got him into the open, to spear him or 

 knife him on foot while the dogs hold him by the ears or 

 by any other part of him that they can get hold of. It 

 is very dangerous work both for men and dogs, for the 



boar is a huge brute, four or five feet long and three feet 

 high, with vast strength in his forepart, the muscles 

 being developed to an exaggerated extent by rooting and 

 tearing in the woods— and his jaws are furnished with 

 long, curved tusks that would go through a half inch 

 plank easily. The dogs are of ted ripped from end to end 

 and disemboweled on the spot, while sometimes the 

 boar will get a clean snap at one and bite a great piece 

 out of its side or its leg, leaving a wound that nothing 

 will heal. It treats a man the same way when it gets 

 the chance. 



It is difficult to give an idea of the invulnerability of a 

 real old boar which has survived a hundred fights. Its 

 ears are all gone, so that the dogs have nothing to lay 

 hold of, it has a "crest" on its shoulders and back, con- 

 sisting of half an inch of solid gristle, which neither steel 

 nor lead can penetrate, and on the top of that a hard coat- 

 ing of stiff, shining bristles, from which, when it lays 

 them back, a spear, or knife or bullet glances off as from 

 a polished marble surface. The only way the dogs can 

 tackle such a brute is to seize it by the legs, at the risk of 

 being ripped every moment, or by its terrific jaws them- 

 selves, with the certainty of being horribly chawed; and 

 the only thing the hunter can do is to come close up to 

 the boar, watch for a moment when its attention is taken 

 up with the dogs, and then drive his spear with all his 

 force into the comparatively soft part just behind the 

 shoulder. Even then the boar often rises in his wrath, 

 rips or tramples the dogs, sends the hunter flying to a 

 tree or to his horse, breaks the spear off short and trots 

 off sullenly to his lair, leaving a trail of blood, but not 

 more than enough to make him more savage than ever. 

 I have seen a boar when it broke loose like that, chase a 

 hunter to his horse, rip his leg before he could mount, 

 and then rear up on his hind legs and rip the horse so 

 badly that it died a few days after. Another way to 

 hunt wild boars is to drive them out of their fastnesses 

 and shoot them, in places where it would be almost im- 

 possible to go in at them with dog and spear, owing to 

 the nature of the country; and this also is a form of 

 sport requiring some nerve and skill. It is an adventure 

 of this kind that I set out to describe for your readers' 

 entertainment. 



I was staying the other day with a friend of mine who 

 owns a large sheep station in the interior of Otago, the 

 southernmost and most mountainous province of New 

 Zealand, and I had for my fellow guest a young clergy- 

 man from England, brother of a very famous sporting 

 man there, and himself keen after any sort of game. At 

 my friend's table, and round the log fire in the evening, 

 sport was all the talk, and "his reverence" and I were 

 much interested in the stories we constantly heard about 

 a tremendous boar which was said to have' held despotic 

 sway in a deep glen away in the mountains for many 

 years. He was commonly supposed to be quite invulner- 

 able, and the shepherds and station hands, who are all 

 boon hunters, declared that he must have fifteen or 

 twenty bullets imbedded in his hide. They scouted the 

 idea of our being able to make anything of him, and my 

 friend the sheep-farmer looked grave and said nothing 

 when I proposed that we should try. A few days later, 

 however, "his reverence" and I were to go for a ride to 

 another part of the run, where there was good paradise 

 duck shooting, and it was agreed that we should take our 

 guns. We were accompanied by a young lady, a beauti- 

 ful, ingenuous, high-spirited girl of sixteen, sister of our 

 hostess. Our friends also sent with us a young shepherd 

 on horseback to show us the way. The parson and I held 

 a secret council of war before starting, and resolved that 

 we would not trouble the paradise ducks that day, but 

 find that big boar and slay him or die. Instead of a shot- 

 gun, therefore, the parson took a French carbine, in 

 which he had great confidence, with copper-cased cart- 

 ridges three inches long, a terrible weapon for big game 

 at short range, but certainly not my idea of a gun for 

 wild boar. I took a double center-fire 12-bore Greener 

 chokebore, a shooting iron which I have found of great 

 service under all sorts of conditions, the choked charge 

 serving as ball at short range, and the scattered shot 

 making sure of bird or hare at 70 or even 80yds. 



When we had got a few miles from the house, we drew 

 the shepherd into conversation about the big boar, atopic 

 on which he soon grew very excited : and on our asking 

 him whether he thought he could show us where to find 

 him, he swore he could, but he declared nothing would 

 induce him to go into the gully Mmself . As for Rosie, 

 she nearly jumped off her horse with joy at the thought 

 of a big pig hunt, and faithfully promised to do exactly 

 as she was told, if we let her come with us. Accordingly, 

 we turned our horses from the direction of the plains and 

 the river and followed our guide in single file, rode along 

 the narrow, winding ridge of a saddle till we were quite 

 in the wilds and could see nothing all around us but hills 

 on hills and alps on alps. It was quite afternoon before 

 we rested for lunch in a shaggy glen, under a precipice 

 of black basalt, where a stream of glittering water gushed 

 out of a crevice into a natural basin full of watercress 

 and sweetly perfumed water-orchids. 



The shepherd told us we would find the boar in the 

 scrub at the bottom of this glen, that being his regular 

 retiring place during the heat of the day. As soon as we 

 had finished our cold swan and scones, and taken a 

 grown person's dose of cherry brandy to steady our 

 nerves, we set off and rode slowly along the steep hill- 

 side, above the gully, the bottom of which was entirely 

 hidden in tangled fernbrake with thorny shrubs grow- 

 ing through it here and there, matted together with bram- 

 bles. The shepherd got off his horse and led it cautiously 

 along the opposite side of the gully which was just 

 within "coo-ee" of us— "coo eel' the watch cry or view 

 hullo in all the Australasian colonies. The only dogs we 

 had were the two collies which had followed the shepherd. 



After working our way noiselessly like this for a mile 

 or so, we saw the gu'ly open into a larger valley ahead of 

 us, and we were beginning to fear we had missed our 

 quarry when we heard a long "coo-ee!" from across the 

 gully and saw the shepherd waving his arms over his 

 head and then pointing below him. At the same moment 

 the dogs began barking furiously from some place in the 

 thicket where we could not see them. Looking down, 

 we could see that some big animal was crushing its way 

 through the brake toward the opening of the gully, fol- 

 lowed by the dogs. We held a hurried conference and 

 agreed that the parson should remain on the hillside and 

 shoot as soon as he got a shot, and that I should go on 

 ahead and wait for the boar in the open in case he broke 

 away. I told Rosie, who was now pale with excitement, 



to come on quickly with me. and to remain perfectly 

 still with her horse and mine, at a safe spot which I 

 showed her on the other side of the gully. She promised 

 she would, and having posted her with the two horses, I 

 took my own stand about 50yds. clear of the scrub in the 

 flat of the gully. The barking and yowling and crush- 

 ing went on hotter and hotter. Suddenly there was a 

 rush and a yell. "Crack" went the parson s carbine. 

 "R-r-r-r-r-r-r," went the long, rattling echo in the crags 

 above us. I felt my triggers and hardened my heart. 



"I've missed him," shouted the parson, "look out for 

 yourself!" At the same moment an immense beast broke 

 from the thicket with the two dogs close to him, and 

 came straight toward me at a heavy gallop. As soon as 

 they got into the open one of the dogs turned tail and 

 skulked yelping away. The other made for the boar 

 pluckily, but was rolled over and left behind. I saw that 

 it all depended on my Greener, so, running a few paces 

 to the left, to get as near a side shot as I could— "bang, 

 bang!"— I fired both barrels as quickly after one another 

 as I could draw- finger from trigger to trigger. The boar 

 let out a deafening sound, a grunt, a roar, and a shriek 

 in one, and tumbled head over heels into a tangle of fern 

 and rushes and brambles. I reloaded, and then went up 

 to him, but what was my astonishment when I felt a 

 light hand on my arm and heard a trembling voice say: 

 "Is he dead? Oh, you will be killed if you go up to him!" 

 It was Rosie, who had forgotten all my injunctions, left 

 the two horses to take care of themselves, and rushed 

 into the very thick of the danger— if there had been any 

 danger— out of sheer excitement and fear for my safety. 

 I soon reassured her, and the parson having descended 

 from his hill, we examined our boar. He was as dead as 

 herrings, herrings that are red. My chokebore had made 

 a hole in him half as big as my fist, just behind the 

 shoulder. The parson, however, had by no means missed 

 him; but the wonderful copper-cased French bullet had 

 simply gone in at one side of his flanks and gone out at 

 the other without stopping him for a moment, He might 

 have died of the wound some other day, or he might not; 

 but such a wound was neither here nor there in the heat 

 of the fray. 



The boar was of a kind of leaden blue color, very 

 smooth all except the forepart, which was bristled like a 

 mat, and though he was scarred and ribbed with old 

 wounds, we could not find any sign of bullets in his skin. 

 He measured just 5ft. from snout to tail, and his tusks 

 were 5-Jin. long from root to point, though, being curved 

 more than half a circle, they looked much shorter. They 

 were as sharp as a razor and beautifully white. 



Fastening the boar's tail in Rosie's ha,t for a trophy, we 

 cut off the head and hung it to the jwson's saddle bees, 

 and in this triumphant style we returned to the station 

 and received a cordial ovation from al 1 hands. The boar's 

 head was duly cured, and I doubt not that when it is fit 

 for the table, the tale will be retold to many a guest in 

 that hospitable home, which I have told to you to-day. 



My friend the parson died of consumption at Salt Lake 

 City on his way home to England; but in a letter I re- 

 ceived from him in New Zealand, written a few weeks 

 before he died, he called to mind the good time we had 

 together "the day Ave slew the great wild boar." 



Edwaed Wakefield. 



THE HIBERNATION OF REPTILES. 



THE more we study and observe reptiles (and the term 

 may here include both the Repiilia proper and the 

 Batrachia) the more do we realize how little we know 

 of their habits, and how much there is still to learn con- 

 cerning them. As regards, for instance, their natural 

 term of life, we can only affirm of those in captivity that 

 a certain snake was so many years in the menagerie, 

 that a particular toad was an inhabitant of our garden, 

 or a lizard of Its cage for such or such a time; but who 

 shall say how much longer they might have lived under 

 their natural conditions, supposing they had escaped 

 their natural enemies? Long-lived all reptiles are reputed 

 to be; and considering that they are active at most only 

 half the year, and sleep away the other half, expending 

 but little energy, even when they display their maximum 

 of vitality, there is no reason why they should not be 

 long-lived. We have no clue to any definite period 

 beyond what can be observed of them in captivity. 

 Evidences of their marvelous powers of endurance are 

 obtained in the phenomenon of hibernation alone, when 

 they retain, or recover vitality under peculiarly trying 

 conditions. Some cases under my own notice have been 

 so amazing as to render one almost a convert to the belief 

 that toads have been encased in rocks for countless ages, 

 as has been often affirmed. Some of my pet batrachians 

 have been encased in solid ice and survived. And hiber- 

 nation during captivity is, and must be, far more trying 

 to them than when, obeying a naturalinstinct, and under 

 certain physiological conditions which dictate that in- 

 stinct, they retire to their own selected spot at their own 

 time. • 



In a reptijiurn it is seen that on the approach of winter 

 they become disinclined for food, are less active and, as 

 visitors vote them during the colder months, are extremely 

 "stupid and disappointing." They are indeed so readily 

 affected by temperature that even during summer a 

 chilly day produces inactivity. It was, I think, the dis- 

 tinguished writer, P. M, Boget, in his " Animal Physiol- 

 ogy" (1884) who first used the oft quoted words "reptiles 

 are obedient to the external atmosphere." Observing 

 them in captivity one is more and more impressed with 

 this truth. "Obedient" in its widest sense they are; sub- 

 mitting, as it were, without resistance, without a struggle 

 even to quasi death, and renewing life with as little 

 effort. More sensitive than the most delicate invalid, 

 your pet batrachians will inform you of a change 

 of weather almost before you perceive it yourself, by 

 their becoming suddenly dull and inactive. Some newts 

 that on warm summer mornings have been swimming 

 about actively, every few minutes popping their noses 

 out of the water to take a fresh breath, suddenly remain 

 below and almost motionless, and you open a door or a 

 window to discover a fall in temperature. Other reptiles 

 are similarly affected, and should you see them by and 

 by resume their activity, you may, without consulting 

 the thermometer, decide that the temperature has risen . 

 Even their intelligence is affected. During the height 

 of summer my captive newts readily recognized me, 



