234 SHOO TING THE PARTRIDGE 



bag including everything of the nature of European 

 game, from the wild boar or bear down to the quail 

 or fieldfare. 



Hares have always been very numerous there, and 

 have formed the object of special battues, in which, 

 these animals being of unusually large size, heavy 

 guns and large-sized shot are used. A large stretch 

 of country is enclosed in a circle of as many as 400 

 men, and as the circle closes gradually in, the hares 

 charge past, and have often to be killed at sixty to 

 eighty yards. It occurred to Baron de Hirsch that 

 the same manoeuvre might, with modifications, be 

 adopted for driving partridges on a large scale. He 

 therefore set to work to lay out special preserves or 

 centres for the birds, and on his estate of St. Johann 

 he has brought this, by means both natural and arti- 

 ficial, to a degree of perfection never before attained 

 in the production and realisation of partridges. 



Prince Trautmansdorff had, however, in the same 

 part of the world, long before this, made bags which 

 would scarcely be credited in this country, the figures 

 at times equalling those of Baron de Hirsch's parties ; 

 but these, as I understood from the Prince himself, 

 when he was on a visit to this country, were 

 mainly made by walking up, alternated occasionally 

 with drives, and without employing the enormous 



