grisly
boar. The subject is well worn; and though the theme is a noble one,
there are but few I fancy who have not read the record of some gallant
fight, where the highest skill, the finest riding, the most undaunted
pluck, and the cool, keen, daring of a practised hand are not _always_
successful against the headlong rush and furious charge of a Bengal
boar at bay.

A record of planter life in India, however, such as this aims at being,
would be incomplete without some reference to the gallant tusker, and
so at the risk of tiring my readers, I must try to describe a
pig-sticking party.

There are two distinct kinds of boar in India, the black and the grey.
Their dispositions are very different, the grey being fiercer and more
pugnacious. He is a vicious and implacable foe when roused, and always
shews better fight than the black variety. The great difference,
however, is in the shape of the skull; that of the black fellow being
high over the frontal bone, and not very long in proportion to height,
while the skull of the grey boar is never very high, but is long, and
receding in proportion to height.

The black boar grows to an enormous size, and the grey ones are,
generally speaking, smaller made animals than the black. The young of
the two also differ in at least one important particular; those of the
grey pig are always born striped, but the young of the black variety
are born of that colour, and are not striped but a uniform black colour
throughout. The two kinds of pig sometimes interbreed, but crosses are
not common; and, from the colour, size, shape of the head, and general
behaviour, one can easily tell at a glance what kind of pig gets up
before his spear, whether it is the heavy, sluggish black boar, or the
veritable fiery, vicious, fighting grey tusker.

Many stories are told of their enormous size, and a 'forty-inch tusker'
is the established standard for a Goliath among boars. The best
fighting boars, however, range from twenty-eight to thirty-two inches
in height, and I make bold to say that very few of the Present
generation of sportsmen have ever seen a veritable wild boar over
thirty-eight inches high.

G.S., who has had perhaps as much jungle experience as any man of
his age in India, a careful observer, and a finished sportsman,
tells me that the biggest _boar_ he ever saw was only thirty-eight
inches high; while the biggest _pig_ he ever killed was a barren
sow, with three-inch tusks sticking