IV WITH BOAT AND GUN IN THE YANGTZE VALLEY. 



the average native farmer is it may be to save his crops from shooter's damage 

 that he rather favours this bird's-nesting. Hence one cause of the local 

 shortage. 



One reason why the foreigner does not make to-day the huge bags of 

 yore may possibly be that he does not put in that amount of hard work and 

 enthusiasm which characterized the shooters of days gone by. There is a 

 regrettable apathy born of the luxury inseparable from a shooting trip 

 now-a-days undreamt of in the past. But the most despondent of those 

 who bewail that we are fast coming to the end of our vshooting tether may 

 take heart of grace from the knowledge that game has been in most abundant 

 supply all the past season, and that prices on the average have seldom been 

 more reasonable. The ground and flying game of this favoured valley is 

 plentiful enough, and good bags will for a long time yet result from assiduous 

 and intelligent work. 



Places like Wuhu, Tatung and Tungliu, amongst many others, must 

 ever remain sanctuaries until such time as the expenses attendant upon reaching 

 them shall be very considerably lessened, while no amount of legitimate shooting 

 can or will ever make any diminution in the countless numbers of the migratory 

 birds, be they wildfowl, woodcocks or snipes, whose close season Nature herself 

 has determined and no mortal can hasten or retard, or set aside. 



Naturally enough there would be much more shooting in what may be 

 termed the ** houseboat radius" were the municipally called close season for 

 partridges, pheasants and quail not so wilfully and obviously disregarded. 

 There are, unfortunately, people who eat, and who, worse still, glory in eating, 

 game right through the summer, while the mail and coast steamers carry 

 away birds in thousands all the year round. A betterment worth working for 

 would be to get the Chinese Government to make the export of game during 

 certain times of the year punishable by law, and to seek the co-operation of 

 the French and International Municipal Councils and the Agents of the several 

 steam ship lines to carry that law, as far as they were able, into effect. 

 The disease is here : we wait for the physician. 



Several attempts to enter the Tainanhu, or Great South Lake, from its 

 eastern, northern and southern sides, have been made, but they have all been 

 frustrated by the shallowness, and in some months absolute dryness, of the few 

 waterways which one could have hoped might have been found negociable. At 

 present the only known entrances are from the west by the Hsiaochang and 

 Songyu Creeks, while a possible connection might be found from Ningquofu in 



