ever, it may be urged that the fact of the horn having been found "deep down below the surface" seems opposed to the theory of recent origin.

Several attempts have been made from time to time to reintroduce the Reindeer in Great Britain, but without much success. Sir Henry Liddell, who made a tour through Sweden and Lapland, brought five Reindeer to his estate in Northumberland, where they bred, and for some time seemed likely to thrive; but they did not live long.* Fleming refers to an experiment of the kind made by the Duke of Athole ("Hist. British Animals," p. 27), and Scrope says the Earl of Fife introduced some into the great forest of Marr in Aberdeenshire ("Days of Deerstalking," p. 406). But they all died, notwithstanding their being turned out on the summits of the hills, which are covered with dry moss, and on which it was supposed they would be able to subsist. Some years previously to this, a similar experiment had been tried in Orkney, where Mr. Robert Traill, in 1816, turned out three Reindeer, a male and two females, which he had imported from Archangel. But they soon died, towards the end of winter-from want, it was believed, of their proper food, in addition to the supposed unsuitability of the climate. It is stated by Messrs. Baikie and Heddle † that "not being found to answer the purposes intended, they were allowed to die out."

* Consett's "Tour through Sweden," p. 152.
"Hist. Nat. Orcadensis," p. 19.

THE Wild Boar is one of the oldest forest animals in Britain, and one of which we find the earliest mention in history. Characteristic figures of it appear on ancient British coins,* and it is one of the earliest animals figured in Celtic works of art.† Britons, Romans, Saxons, and Normans all hunted it

*Evans's "British Coins," pls. vi., viii., xi., xii., and xiii.

"Hora Ferales," p. 185, pl. xiv.; Montellier, "Mémoires sur les Bronzes Antiques," Paris, 1865; and Stephens' "Literature of the Kymry," p. 250.

here in turns. Figures of the wild boar are found on Roman monuments in England; Pennant has noticed one such at Ribchester, formerly a famous Roman station. "It is supposed," he says, “to have been an honorary inscription to Severus and Caracalla, by the repetition of the address. It was done by a vexillatio of one of the legions quartered here. A stone fixed in the wall of a small house near the church gives room to suppose that it belonged to the twentieth. The inscription is LEG. XX. W. FEC., and on one side is the sculpture of a Boar, an animal I have in two other instances observed attendant on the inscriptions made by the famous Legio vicessima valens victrix."*

Nor should we omit to notice the Roman altar which was found in 1749 near Stanhope, in the bishopric of Durham, usually referred to as the Weardale altar, and dedicated by a grateful Roman prefect to the god Sylvanus for the capture of an enormous Boar, which many of his predecessors had in vain attempted to destroy. On this altar was discovered the following inscription:-" Sylvano invicto sacrum

.. ob Aprum eximia formæ captum, quem multi antecessores ejus prædari non potuerunt." A similar altar, also dedicated to Sylvanus by the hunters of Banna, was found at Birdoswald, in Northumberland.t

*"Tour to Alston Moor," 1801, p. 93. See also Horsley, "Britannia Romana, or the Roman Antiquities of Britain," folio, 1732.

Wright, "The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon," pp. 207, 267.

Aubrey has given a minute account of a sculptured representation of hunting the wild boar, over a Norman doorway at Little Langford Church. This bas-relief is figured in Hoare's "Modern Wiltshire."

After the expulsion of the Danes, and during the short restoration of the Saxon monarchy, the sports of the field still maintained their ground, and hunting and hawking were favourite pastimes. A painting on a MS. of the ninth century, in the Cotton Library,

represents a Saxon chieftain, attended by his huntsman and a couple of hounds, pursuing wild boars through a wood.*

In the" Colloquy of Alfric," a hunter of one of the royal forests gives a curious account of his profession. When asked how he practises his craft, he replies : "I braid nets and set them in a convenient place, and set on my hounds, that they may pursue the beasts of chase, until they come unexpectedly to the nets, and so become entangled in them, and I slay them in the nets." He is then asked if he cannot hunt without * Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes," p. 5, fig. 1.

nets, to which he replies: "Yes, I pursue the wild animals with swift hounds." He next enumerates the different kinds of game which the Saxon hunter usually hunted-"I take harts, and boars, and deer, and roes, and sometimes hares." "Yesterday," he continues, "I took two harts and a boar . . . . the harts with nets, and I slew the boar with my weapon.' "How were you so hardy as to slay a boar?" "My hounds drove him to me, and I, there facing him, suddenly struck him down." "You were very bold, then." "A hunter must not be timid, for various wild beasts dwell in the woods."

The Welsh laws of Howel Dha (A.D. 940, fide Spelman and Llwyd,) provided (cap. xvi. § 10) that the wild boar should be hunted between the ninth of November and the first of December, but later on, in Edward II.'s time the season for hunting the boar was between Christmas Day and Candlemas Day (Feb. 2).

Edward the Confessor, whose disposition seems to have been suited rather to the cloister than to the throne, would join in no secular amusement but the chase. According to William of Malmesbury,* he took the greatest delight to follow a pack of swift hounds in pursuit of game, and to cheer them with his voice. He had a royal palace at Brill, or Brehull, Bucks, to which he often repaired for the pleasure of hunting in his forest of Bernwood. This forest, it is said, was much infested by a wild boar, which was

"Hist. Reg. Anglorum," Lib. II., cap. xiii.