The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-02-10

season, perhaps there is no better place to visit than a clump of beech trees, and no better time than imme- diately after sundown. Then the ltoat begin to move about in search of food. and if there are beechnuts to be had they will surely have them. One even ing last October I was coming down 8 mountain trail shortly after sunset. On both sides there were spruces, but on one side, to my left, the ever greens extended but a short distance
 giving way to deci1uous trees, among which were many beeches. Suddenly
 heard a loud rustling-unmistak the sound of animals running over dry leaves, and thought that l must have disturbed a herd of wild boar, and that they were beating hasty retreat through the woods. Quickly I pushed my way through the fringe of spruces, in order to get a glimpse of them be- fore they had quite disappeared but to my surprise I saw the wild pigs com- ing toward me; they were just enter ing this part of the woods, not running away from 1t, as I had supposed. drew back close to the spruces, to see
 what would happen. At once, all the boar, big and little, began an active search for beechnuts, roofing under the fallen leaves with their shouts, many of them grunting necessarily, as though this were quite necessary to success. There may have been a doz- en altogether, but I soon found myself giving special attention to four + a large SOW and her three pigs, These were all coming straight in my direc
 tion, but the wind was blowing from them to me. and they were far too busy
 to raise their heads to see me. On they came, keeping pretty close together
 but the little fellows usually some
 what in advance of their mother.
 waited until they came within ten
 and took firm hold of a spruce branch; old sows have a rather nasty habit of charging if they think their young ones are in danger, and I wished to be prepared to climb in case the big mother pig before me should get it is. to her head that I was thrsting for the blood of her infants, But nolRlng hap pened, except that the quartet contin-
 ued to advance, hard at work eating beechnuts ana quite unaware of my presence, Every now and then the mother would grunt, and often the lit. tie ones would respond by grunting back at her. So busy were they that one little fellow came up within ten feet of me before he even suspected
 that there was anything wrong. Then he raised his head and saw me stand ing there. At any rate, he saw some. thing which did not uook quite right and for several seconds he just stared
 and stared presumably trying to make done tfleir best to prove that they up his mind whether what he saw was
 GLIMPsES OF WILD BOAR
 | dangerous or not. Had I moved a nus cle, he would have run for his dear life, but I did not even wink, and at that he dropped his snout to the ground and continued his search or beech- nuts apparently satisfied that, what ever I was, I belonged right there. In the meantime, his brethren had con- tirued to advance, and in less than a minute one of them was actually with in six feet of where l stood Then, whether he sfnelled me or not l can rot tell, but he raised his little snout and looked squarely at me as his broth CT had done, Again 1 kept. perfectly still, but after watching me for ten
 seconds, this piglet was sure there was
 something wrong and ran off several yards in q semicircle. Then he stopped
 and stood like a statuette, with his ab
 surd little tail straight in the air But
 he no longer looked at me On the con- trary, his nose was pointed in quite q
 different direction; he seemed to be
 waiting for his nose and ears to con
 vince nim that his suspicious were
 we'll founded, At this moment the old