ounds, he will not budge an inch for the little
yapping spaniel, whom he treats with contempt.

I have known many instances when, on hearing a jolly row in the covert,
I have crawled in on my hands and knees, and found a boar being bayed by
my spaniels--in fact, I have killed more pigs in this way than in any
other. The danger is that you may have your dogs killed by the boar;
this has happened to me on one or two occasions, more especially with
young dogs.

I had once a cunning old spaniel dog (poor 'Dick,' well known to most
sportsmen out here), who has frequently come out of the wood with his
mouth full of pig's hair, he evidently having torn the hair off the
animal while laying in his lair. (Dick was never hurt by a pig.) I have
often surrounded, with my brother sportsmen and myself, large bushes in
which the piggies were securely hidden, driven them out, and shot them
as one would do hares or rabbits.

I have heard a good deal of the danger of pig shooting, on account of
the savage propensities of the animal; but I have found that, with very
rare exceptions, the Anatolian wild boar always runs. It is true that
they (she or he, the females are the most savage) have a nasty knack of
giving a sort of jerk with their heads, when fighting or even passing an
enemy, and that jerk means to a man the ripping up of his leg from his
heel to his thigh, to a dog the tearing open of his entrails.

On one occasion I was out cock shooting, when some shepherds' dogs in a
valley adjoining that in which I was walking started a large wild boar,
a beast they call a '_solitaire_,' from the fact that he is always seen
after a certain time of life alone. The animal made for a ridge dividing
the valleys; on getting there he passed along the sky-line, about eighty
yards from where I was. I changed my cartridges and fired a ball at the
pig, who rushed away, apparently unshot; on going to the spot, however,
where he had passed when I fired, I found some drops of blood. This
blood I traced for about half a mile, till I came to a large clump of
bushes into which my spaniels dashed, evidently close to their game. I
heard a tremendous row in the bushes, had hardly time to prepare when
the great beast with his eyes all bloodshot and foaming at the mouth
rushed straight at me. I was on a narrow path, from which there was no
escape, as the boar was tearing up it, followed by the dogs. I fired a
ball straight in his face, at the distance of about