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162 the offenders. This practice is noted as peculiar to the Azamgarh district, but it seems to indicate a denial of even the right of being owned to the animal, which may once have been general.

As low castes rise, it is just possible that the pigs they cherish may rise with them. Some Europeans have tried to breed and feed pigs in the Western fashion and not without success. Others have imported stock from Europe, but not all the dollars in Chicago will avail to prove the industry respectable in native eyes for many a year to come.

But there is nothing to be ashamed of in the character and conduct of wild pigs. They cut for themselves shelters from the sugar-cane or the tall millet stocks, where they breed and sleep, take the best of the crops and defy mankind. The wild boar has been known to face and defeat the tiger, and though his first impulse is to fly before British sportsmen, he often makes a gallant stand before the unequal odds of horses, razor-sharp spears, and legions of yelling rustics brought against him. No swordsman can cut right and left so swiftly and surely as the wild boar with his tusks when fighting for life. He is sometimes shot by Rajput chiefs, by whom he is as strictly preserved as the fox in England. This protection breeds boldness. My son tells me that he was once shown a lane in a suburb of a Rajput town along which a certain well-known wild boar was accustomed to pass at dawn. The animal was next day shot by the ruler of the State and a side of bacon was despatched by special messenger on a camel as a gift to a brother prince some hundred miles away. The Maharaja took just as much interest in pointing out the course of his bullet as an English sportsman who has brought down a stag, and expressed as cordial