236 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
dangerous are tliose of the lower jaw ; the upper tusks seem to 
have no other function than to sharpen these. I have never met 
sows armed witli powerful tusks. 
The chase of the wild boar requires little knowledge on the part 
of the hunter, little skill or fineness of smell on that of the pack. 
It is a beast of warm and gross track, like the fox. The wild 
boar — a good traveler — takes a decided part when he has gained 
a considerable advance on the dogs. It is rare in this case that 
he loses it. This chase ought to belong exclusively to the morn- 
ing. The ancients killed 'the wild boar with the spear. This 
method is generally abandoned for the double-barrelled gun, but 
is still retained by a few noble hunters, faithful to the traditions 
of their art. I know more than one who willingly unsheaths, to 
come to the assistance of his dogs in a dramatic death- fight, and 
to attack the wild boar with the knife. 
One of my most interesting and recent recollections dates Octo- 
ber 26, 1845. The scene took place in our forest of Bearfield. 
He liked to loaf there, as do all who have visited it — men or 
beasts, Parisians, roebucks, or pheasants — he prolonged his stay 
there as long as his means of subsistence held out. For brutality, 
character, magnitude, the length and sharpness of his tusks, he was 
the living image of that wild boar of Calydon, so often mentioned in 
the history of the illustrious personages of antiquity. His phys- 
ical advantages, heightened by the lustre of some acts of his pri- 
vate life where he had proved the mischief of his nature, had 
finally won for him a cut-throat reputation, which had not a little 
contributed to banish from his dwelling a crowd of importunate 
visitors. The masters of hunting packs in the country would have 
gladly attacked him had they got any definite knowledge of bis 
whereabouts. It would have been for some of them a new occa- 
sion of showing their coolness of temper and courage, as well as 
their skill with the hunting knife. An adversary of four hundred 
pounds weight does not every day offer you game. But how to 
make the piqueui^s or valets de cliiens, with any love for their 
packs, decide on making the acquaintance of so terrible a beast. 
They kept dark for two years, waiting until age should have bent 
his tusks and dulled their edge, that is to say, that during two 
