The Mellette County pioneer. [volume] (Wood, Mellette County, S.D.) 19??-1971, 1921-07-01
B0ARS MUST co
French Government DEGREES
Their determination.
Lovers Of the Chase Will Reoret the
Passing Of Animal that Furnished
Good Sport.

British soldiers may regret the fact,
remarks an editorial writer in the
Manchester Guardian, that the French
government has declared war to the
death against the wild boar .
but the determination will be q lively
process.
The British soldiers piquant sense
OF the foreignness Of France was re-
neWed when he marched through
Amiens about Christmas time and saw
a newly killed wild boar hanging by
the heels outside a butchers shop, with
all his dark bristles still on him." says
the Guardian.
Half the French country houses in
which our STATS lived had on their
walls one or more heads of wild boars
Killed by the men of the family in the
splendid forests Of Crecy OF Hesdin,
where British officers out riding in leis-
ure hours would often see a mighty
sow cross a glade or scamper along
outside the fringe Of the forest, at
tended by her litter Of fast-trotting
S%ucklings.
The noble savage Is now to be
hunted, shot, trapped and assailed with
every form Of frightfulness till he goes
the way Of the bear, and draws back his
western OutpoSts into the Black forest
and some Of the other great forests Of
Germany, Austria and Russia, where he
Is still much valued as a beast Of ven
cry. At any rate, he has held his
ground in western central Europe
longer than the bear, who dares not
show his nose out of the western edge
of the thick forests of pine and scrub
In the lower Engadine, near Zernetz.
The bear, too, had q bad time during
his last efforts to Subsist further west.
One of the last certified appearances Of
the bear in the canton of Berne-ex-
cept in the celebrated bear-pit of its
principal town-was in 1892, when a
redoubtable specimen settled at the
Little Scheidegg. now beloved Of
tourists, neal Grindelwald, and aban-
oning the seemly vegetarian habits Of
his race, ate any sheep he could catch
on either slope of the pass.
IL ScSluS W nave set up Il reign VI
terror comparable to that Of the ia.
nous Great Dog Of Ennerdals in our
lake district, but he was at last slain
in single combat by d Grindelwald
youth, whom he ~endeavored to embrace
and who broke his skull with the butt
end of a muSket. after partly filing
him with lead. The victor III this gentle
and joyous passage of arms was given
20 francs by a grateful canton. Money
used to go further then.
"Our last English wild boar was
probably dead before the Eighteenth
century was born, though the family
may have hung on rather longer In
out-of-the-way parts Of the Highlands,
now happy in possessing likewise the
only British specimens Of the wildcat.
Evidently the wild boar, while he
lasted, was very much In peoples
minds. Witness the names Of the
~taverns, Falstaff's and others, and also
his place Of honor as one of the four
heraldic beasts Of the class and as the
crest of Richard III. He seems to have
preceded the turkey as the staple thing
to eat or Christmas day, and a trace
of this greatness survives In the Gus
tom Of serving up a boar's head at
dinner on Christmas day in the hall
Of Queens college, Oxford"