-^ Sport and Nature in Gcrm^iny 



reply of an Italian to a tourist who remonstrated with 

 him on the subject of the extraordinarily widespread 

 destruction of doves by means of nets in Northern Italy. 

 The same answer would probably be given by the monks ^ 

 of certain islands of the Mediterranean, who, keeping up 

 an old custom, kill countless multitudes of turtle-doves 

 during their migration. These are their favourite dainties, 

 and they also export them largely in a preserved state. 

 So, too, it will be a difficult matter to obtain from German 

 sportsmen the complete abandonment of their pleasant 

 spring campaign against the woodcock. Through the 

 very interesting experiments of the Duke of Northumber- 

 land, who had marks put upon numbers of young 

 woodcock, it has been ascertained that large numbers of 

 them undoubtedly spend the whole winter in England. 

 Now, if Professor Boettger and Wilhelm Schuster are 

 right in their conclusions, drawn from similar observations, 

 as to the return of the conditions of the Tertiary period, 

 and if the species of birds they observed used at an 

 earlier date not infrequently to winter with us, a more 

 extended protection for the woodcock ought, at any rate, 

 to be introduced. 



The continual levying of contributions on our colonies 



' On the destruction of the turtle-dove {Tiirti/y tiaiiir, L.) during its 

 migration to Greece, see Otmar Reiser, Curator of the National Museum 

 of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Materialen zii eiiier Ornis Balcaiiica. At 

 Syra one sportsman shoots as many as a hundred in a day ; at Paxos, 

 according to the Grand Duke Ludwig Salvator, they are killed in heaps. 

 The lands of the Strophades Islands are completely equipped with huge 

 falling snares and shooting-stands for the systematic massacre of the 

 *' Trigones." Everywhere in Greece when the cry of " Trigones ! " is 

 heard, fire is opened upon the newcomers, 



191 



