hunters close around him, and a mortal combat ensues, in which the beast eventually falls a victim.
In treatises on venery and hunting, the technical term for the boar in the first year is "a pig of the sounder;" in the second, "a hog;" in the third, "a hog steer;" and in the fourth, "a boar."
Many of the forests in our own country were infested by wild boars. The Anglo-Saxons seem, from the rude frescoes and prints which are handed down to us, to have hunted this animal on foot with no other weapon but the boar-spear, and attended by powerful dogs; and apparently with such success, that at the Norman conquest William the First thought it necessary to make some strict laws for the preservation of this beast of the chase. The period for hunting the wild boar among the Anglo-Saxons was in September. Howel Dha, the celebrated Welsh lawgiver, gave permission to his chief huntsman to chase the boar from the middle of November until the end of December.
These animals continued to linger in the forests of England and Scotland for several centuries after the Norman conquest, and many tracts of land have derived their name from this occurrence, while instances of valor in their destruction are recorded in the heraldic devices of many a noble family. Fitzstephen, a writer of the twelfth century, informs us that wild boars, stags, fallow-deer, and bulls, abounded in the vast forests which existed on the northern side of London in the time of Henry II. The learned Whittaker informs us that this animal roved at liberty over the woods of the parish of Manchester for many centuries after the Romans departed from that station, and hence the name of Barlow (boar-ground) came to be assigned to a district in the south-western portion. In Cumberland, the appellation "Wild Boar's Fell," still points out the haunts of this animal. The forests of Bernwood in Buckinghamshire, of Stainmore in Westmoreland, and those extensive woody districts which once existed in Hertfordshire and over the Chiltern Hills, were formerly peopled with wild boars, wolves, stags, and wild bulls. Many ancient Scottish writers, too, speak of the existence of this animal in the woods of Caledonia. In the county of Fife there exists a tract of country formerly called Muckross (which in the Celtic signifies Boar's Promontory); it is said to have been famous as the haunt of wild boars. One part of it was called the Boar Hills, which name has since been corrupted into Byro Hills. It lies in the vicinity of St. Andrew's, and in the cathedral church of that city two enormous boar's tusks were formerly to be seen chained to the high altar, in commemoration of an immense brute slain by the inhabitants after it had long ravaged the surrounding country.
The precise period at which the wild boar became exterminated in England and Scotland cannot be correctly ascertained. Master John
