Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1890-08-29
WILD BEASTS OF INDIA.
SPORTSMSN FIND PLENTY OF Ex.
CITING QUARRlES.

The Wild Boar Is the Best and Bravest.
The RhiSoceros' Acute Senses of Smell
and Hearing-Points on Hunting the
Savage Animals.
Of all Indian animals the wild boar is
the best and bravest. have seen a great
deal of him, having for many years hunted
him on horseback or with a line of ele-
plants to drive him out of the thick
c~overts, SO that other men well mounted
on fleet horses might pursue and slay him
with their spears. was but an indifferent
performer with the hog spear, and have no
feats OF prowess to recount, though I once
took a first spear where about ten other
men were eager for that honor; but it was
q very small boar, and 1t was quite his own
fault that he fell into my hands, for 1 was
sitting smoking at the end of a covert,
just thinking of starting for home after a
blank morning, when the animal rushed
out and in self defense l was obliged to
spear it. How angry some of the other
men were at my luck, though they did not
NIL know how unmeritcd it was.
1t was most interesting to watch the
lodges and devices of a cunning old gray
boar as l stood in my howdah md tried to
get the elephants to drive him out at a
point convenient for the riders. The boar
usually had his own ideas as to the line he
would take if he were compelled to face
the open; but before coming to that last
resource he would try everything else.
Perhaps it was not heroic conduct on his
part, but he would seek to induce the old
fat SOW, his wife, with her infant progeny,
to go out and show themselves as a blind
to the hunters. If there were any of his
older sons in the jungle he would roust
them from their hiding places and try to
drive them out, to become a vicarious sac
rifice.
II CUNNING BOA
He would lie down and hide himself in
an incredible small patch Of grass, so that
the elephants might pass him by unsus-
pectingly; or, if too carelessly pressed by
a loose line, he would charge right at some
lettering elephants legs, and there are
very few elephants that will not finch and
turn aside from a wild boar's charge. It
needed much patience II watchfulness to
contend with all the wiles of the clever an
imal. usually carried a gun loaded with
snipe shot, and a charge fired into the grass
or bushes just behind where the boar was
moving generally startled him, and if a
chance pellet hit him he thought it best to
quit the covert az trust to his speed to
reach some stronger shelter or swamp i'm
penetrable to elephants and horses.
1t takes a very fast horse to catch a full
grown boar in a gallop over the open
plai- 1T every experienced rider knows
thS. must go as hard as he can if he
means to spear the animal. l shall not try
to repeat the oft told story of the mortal
combat that ensues. Oftentimes l could
n MI thn innianv,tc nP H., "a ,,, fn@,, r,,-
howdah, for not ~unfrequently the boar
when %overtaken would jink and come
round again to the jungle from which he
had started. When men ride really well
the boar seldom escapes, unless he has the
luck to find some deep swamp through
which the horses cannot follow him.
A full grown wild boar in lower Bengal
is about thirty inches high, but they are
sometimes found as high as thirty-six
inches, and there is skeletoni in the Indian
museum in Calcutta of a boar that was
forty inches at the shoulder. There is al
most as much difference in the anatomy of
a wild boar and q tame one as there is be-
tween q man-of-war and a merchant ship.
RHINoCERos.
In the size of the brain the wild boar has
a marked superiority, and perhaps this ac-
counts for his greaI courage, which makes
him fearless of everything. One morning,
looking out of a railway carriage, l saw a
wild boar come charging down at the pass
ing train, but he missed it, for the train
was going too fast for him, and he was a
little hampered in forcing his way through
the wire railway fencing.
l had something to do with rhinoceros,
but never succeeded in shooting one,
though. l sought them for three long and
hot days under the guidance of the best
spOrtsmen in Assam, n | visited their
haunts in the Sunderbunds with men of
great local experience. But the rhinoceros,
like all big animals, has acute senses of
smelling and hearing, and makes off at
the slightest indication Of danger. We
had a large one in the Calcutta Zoo which
was very tame, and when it got a bad
abscess in the head, of which it eventually
died, it used to come and lie down to nave
it's ear syringed by the veterinary rye
whom it learned to recognize.
There were two fine rhinoceros in the
rajah's menagerie at Burdwan in the in
closure in which the crocodiles were kept,
for the pond in which the crocodiles used
to swim served also as a bathing place for
the rhinoceros. One day a young pig
had been turned into the Enclosure to be-
come food for the crocodiles, and as these
animals don't travel very fast on land piggy
led them a lively chase, and at last, per-
haps by chance, it took refuge under the
legs of one of the rhinoceros, which was
looking on solemnly, but when the croco-
dies approached the rhinoceros the latter
presented his horn and warned the croco-
dies to be off. And so the pig survived
and grew up and lived for some months
under the protection Of the rhinoceros.-
Longman's Magazine.
A Mistaken Notion,