FROM THE MAGAZINES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 137, 10 June 1911, Page 16

FROM THE MAGAZINES.

HUNTING WILD BOAR. I suppose that to most men comes at times an instinctive longing to get back for a while close to Nature, at her wildest, to experience, if only for one ' day. the tierce joys and thrills and excitement of primal emotions. It is this longing, more than the mere lust of ; killing, that sends the sportsman into the out-places. There still remain a few such places in a too orderly world, ' and none where tbe desire is better likely to be fully gratified than in the wide, unsettled spaces of New Zealand. In early colonial days, the days of sparse settlement, so numerous and predatory were the. wild pigs that they formed an absolute menace to the pas--1 toralists. On the plains of the llutt ■ and in llawke's Bay the droves wandered like flocks of shop, and early run-hold- : ers found it necessary to organise bat- . tues on a large scale for their destruo--1 tion. This was generally a matter of contract—the squatters paying at the '■ rate of sixpence a tail, as evidence of a ■ pig destroyed. 1 With the arrival of the flocks and herds the wild pig quickly developed a taste for fresh mutton, and became a hunting animal on his own account. Thousands of fat lambs, ewes, and hoggets disappeared annually to fill tbe maws of the porcine marauders, till at length exa-spcratcd dock-masters banded together for the destruction of the comI mon enemy. Decimated by this wholesale warfare, and harried by pork-loving i Maoris, the pig tribes withdrew themselves far from the region of the menfolk. The hunter of to-day who would meet I the wild boar of New Zealand in his ! native wilds, who would pit skill and I weapons against the tusks and the rush | of a genuine old fighting "Captain Cook," must seek his quarry far afield —in tho wide foothills, beyond the fringe of the great upland forests.—From "The Wild Rig of New Zealand," in "Chambers's Journal." TTIE FEAR OF DEATH. In the current number of "The Coun-try-Side Monthly." the editor, Mr E. Kay Robinson, who has therein been advocating the theory that there is no terror in death, explains the reason why ! "we are all able to face the real fact of death with equanimity. When the idea of death excite-; terror v.nrt norror." "All i our emotions as human beings," he says, | "arc merely translations of our animal 1 feelings into terms of human consciousness. In other words, our thoughts arc j based upon our instincts, nnd our in- ! st.nets are useful habits of action which ' we have inherited from ancestors of long ago. I think that when these instincts were formed, death by violence was the common fate of our ancestors, as it is of other animals of to-day. and he who ceased to resist when resistance seemed hopeless had the best chance of saving , his life after all." After giving examples jof the ferocious daring of savage tribes in warfare. Mr Robinson adds: "All these cases show that the overmastering fear of death which characterises civii lised people is a. product of their civiliI sat ion." '