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districts, where the estates are managed by tenant farmers or by 

 peasant proprietors, with the result that the game laws are a dead 

 letter, and everyone hunts without restraint, killing every creature, 

 irrespective of age or sex or season. The few that escape such 

 persecution are then harassed without interval, all the year round, 

 by packs of ill-trained hounds. 



Sportsmen in the mountains kill their game in either of three ways : 

 by lying in ambush, with beaters, or with dogs. The first of these 

 methods is the favourite with those who hunt the bear in spring, 

 when the animal has left his winter quarters after the 

 melting of the snows to feed on the young nettles that cuoq*.- p- 

 at that season sprout on the sunny slopes. A know- 

 ledge of the bear's food and manner of feeding at each season is in 

 fact essential to the sportsman. A litde later, in June, the brute 

 takes to a meat diet, slaying all manner of smaller animals, and 

 it is then that the sportsman may with success post himself next 

 evening just to leeward of the kill, silent of course and well hidden. 

 The orreatest care must be taken not to disturb the carcase. In those 

 cases in which, as sometimes happens, the bear does not put in an 

 appearance until a late hour, I fancy a powerful magnesium lamp 

 might be turned on him suddenly with excellent effect.* In July, 

 when raspberries come in season, he again turns vegetarian, and 

 may be shot by anyone who will hide in suitable spots where there 

 is abundance of this fruit. Mulberries and wild apples consti- 

 tute the bear's food in the month of September ; and when, in 



* In his recently-published account of expeditions after big game in Central Africa, 

 Monsieur Foh gives some particulars of the successful use of such a night lamp. — Ed. 



