DESCENDANTS OF CAPT. COOK’S PIGS.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume XIII, Issue 563, 26 March 1868, Page 4

DESCENDANTS OF CAPT. COOK’S PIGS.

Db, Haast says ; —lt is wonderful to behold the botanical and zoological changes which have taken place since Captain Cook set his foot in New Zealand. Some pigs which he left with the natives have increased and run wild in such a way that it is impossible to destroy them. There are large tracts of country where they reign supreme. The soil looks as if it were ploughed by their burrowing. Some station-holders of 100,000 acres have had to make contracts for killing them at 6d per tail, and as many as 22,000 on a single run have been killed by adventurous parties without any diminution being discernible. Not only are they obnoxious by occupying the ground which the sheep-farmer needs for his flocks, but they assiduously follow the ewes when lambing, and devour the poor lambs is soon as they make their appearauce. They do not exist on the western side of the Alps, and only on the lower grounds of the eastern side where the snow seldom falls, so that the explorer has not the advantage of profiting by their existence where food is the scarcest The boars are sometimes very large, with enormous tusks, and are covered with long black bristles, resembling closely the wild boars of the Ardennes, and they are equally savage and courageous.