PAINFUL BEREAVEMENT OF THE FRENCH WILD BOAR. 241 
The hunter owes respect to the sow, the pig, the red beast, even 
to the beast of company, unless its destruction be necessary. 
To the third year, light beast and of good speed, and power- 
fully armed ; belong of right all the honors of the chase, hounds, 
relays, and flourish of bugles ; to the fourth year, heavy beast, of 
murderous humor, the ball and the knife. 
But a melancholy thought oppresses me that I can contain no 
longer in my breast, and here demand permission to exhale. 
The forests of France, already bereft of the elk, the urus, the 
bear, the fallow deer, and the stag, are now threatened with the 
loss of the last flower of their crown (style noble). The sep- 
aration of properties is reducing the wild boar to the state of 
myth. 
I was present in 1835 and 1836, at the extermination of their 
race in those magnincent provinces of the M^connais, so judicious- 
ly chosen by the Marquis Foudras as the scene of those cynegetic 
exploits which he relates so well. 
The hunters respected neither age nor sex ; they put to death 
more than one hundred and fifty in a radius of three or four 
leagues in two campaigns ; they hunted every day, and the few 
that survived the butchery cleared the country. Now that they 
have dissipated their wealth — that they have killed the goose that 
laid the golden eggs, they seek to repopulate; they raise wild 
boars in their barn yards. When a sow is big they transfer her 
to a country house, where they surround her with every comfort ; 
then when she has pigged, the bottom of her pen is pierced with 
little holes for the pigs to pass in and out — wander into the adja- 
cent woods, go, return, get themselves eaten by the wolf, etc., as 
their fancy leads them. 
In this manner it is pretty certain that the litter will remain in 
the neighborhood provided it is not disturbed. 
It remains for the law to interdict the chase and sale of the 
wild boar after the hunting season. 
The wild boar and his family have another enemy in our forests 
beside man, in the wolf. The wolf loves to prowl around the en- 
virons of the cover where the sow shelters her brood, and then wo 
to the imprudent pig that strays ofif ! Her lair is a cabin artistical- 
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