The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-09-13
From the Baltimore Sun. if NNF all the sports" said a hunter kV| of big game, "boar hunting is
 the most hazardous and excit-

tOJ of big game, "boar hunting is
 the most hazardous and excit- ing.
 From the days of the Romans and even before that time boar hunting has been a favorite sport with the nobility of European and Asiatic countries. In fact. restored sculptures of the Assyrians show boar hunts as special subjects, and many fine art pieces are now in existence which depict the killing of boars by dogs.
 "On the continent the sport has been preserved to this day. while the English mans love of every sort of dangerous sport has led him to continue boar hunt ing under changed conditions in Morocco and India.
 Tt Is written of Nero that nothing pleased that degenerate monarch of a decadent city more than to witness a fight between tiger and a wild boar It is not recorded that Nero ever placed his own person in jeopardy but when he wished to see sport which brought out the perfection of brute courage and endur- |. The tiger always killed the boar, but inevitably died of the wounds he received from the tusks of his antagonist.
 "Richard Occur de Lion was introduced to the sport of pig-sticlxing by Saladin when he was in the Holy Land. In his- tories of the crusaders there is related an incident of the lion heart in connection with boar hunt
 "Richard is said to have approached a boar on foot with a lance, crouched, ready to run him through. The boar charged and Richard sent the shaft home. So great was the strength of the man who sent Robin Hood heels over head in a skipping match that the lance lunged clear through the body of the boar
 "But the vitality and the courage of the animal were not lessened and he strug- gled toward King Richard. climbing up the lance, as 1t were. Seeing that if he held the butt of the lance he would be killed, Richard jumped over the boar and, turning, killed him with the famous broadsword. probably the same with which he severed the iron bar placed 
 'It is in England that the greatest at tention appears to have been paid to the boar, however, for there are several noble families in England and Scotland which owe their possession of heraldic devices to the performance of feats with which the wild hog was connected.
 Even the famous yuletide custom of marching through the dining hall with a boar's head on a chafer as the opening of the season's' feast has specific origin. according to English historians.
 Tt appears that once upon time there was a serious-minded student of Queens college, Oxford. So engrossed was he in his scholastic work that whenever he went for a walk he carried in his hand g volume from which he read as he took his slight exercise.
 "One afternoon he was walking through one of the many beautiful woods that lie along the Thames valley. near Oxford, when he was suddenly attacked by wild boar.
 "Utterly surprised from his communion with the ancient Greeks-for the volume S~~-~~>~~~~ the tome down the boar's throat, crying repeatedly, 'Graecum est ('It is Greels). So vigorous was he in impressing upon the boar the unseemliness of interrupting a scholars communion with the ancients that he succeeded in choking the boar to death with Aristotle.
 His feat was so.admired by his fellow students that they cut the boar's head off, placed 1t on a platter and marchcd through the town. From that time for- ward the boar's head always preceded the other viands that were provided for the yuletide feast
 Most hunters who go in for pig-sticking carry revolvers. It is not considered sportsmanlike to shoot boar so long as one is mounted, but if a man is thrown to the ground near a charging boar 1t is per save his life.
 "Sometimes the boar is quicker than the horse and succeeds in catching him with his vicious lunges. Then 1t is that horse and rider both go down, and it is a case of sheer luck if the man gets away with his life.
 Few men are strong enough to run a boar through with a lance at close quar- ters, the impetus of the onward rush be- ing lacking. Then it is that the revolver comes into play-if the man is quick enough to draw 1t and fire.
 Many life has been lost in the hills surrounding Simla, India, where the An- glo-Indians do their boar hunting, and still more around Tangier. in Morocco, which is full of outcasts of all nations, men of good birth and position who find that city haven and refuge where no extradition laws reach them
 'Still the sport goes on. It thrilled the blood of William the Conoueror and Rich