CHAPTER III. 



SMALL GAME. 



China has long enjoyed the reputation as 

 a field offering to the sportsman the 

 opportunity of making a bag of small 

 game of a vastly varied nature. But this 

 might not have been the situation had that 

 great wave of sportsmen which swamped 

 the prolific shooting centres of Africa and 

 of India done other than but lightly touch- 

 ed these more eastern shores. Happily 

 shooting in China for many years past has 

 been comparatively free from the visits of 

 the wandering foreign sportsman ; but un- 

 happily sport is now seriously threatened 

 by the foe within the gates, for it is 

 impossible to believe that small game can 

 long withstand the organized raids of the 

 countless numbers of those who now go a 

 shooting. There are others far greater, 

 numerically, than the Anglo-Saxon ; the 

 Continentals and the Japanese, who can 

 repeat the reputed old dictum, " Here is a 

 fine day, let us go and kill something.'* 

 Unfortunately this " fine day " of theirs 

 occurs both in season and out of season, 



