272 SPORT IN EUROPE 



that landrails can be shot in quantity, as they are then packed in a 

 restricted space. When the grass is gone, the birds make for the 

 maize fields, where they are exceedingly difficult to shoot. 



The woodcock gives, on the spring and autumn migrations, very 

 pretty sport in the oak forests around Bucharest. The bird may 



either be driven or else stalked in the twilight a quarter 

 Woodcock. 



of an hour after sundown. Nearly all the best wood- 

 cock ground is private, but permission is, as a rule, not difficult to 

 obtain. The best passage of woodcocks, however, is in the north, 

 in the vicinity of Jassy, where a party may often shoot their sixty 

 to eighty birds a day. The migrants are on their way from Turkey 

 to Russia, where they find huge forests suitable to quiet breeding ; 

 but some stay to breed in the Carpathians, where they are hard 

 to find. 



Hares were very plentiful in the plains twenty years ago, but 



coursing has all but exterminated them. To-day, how- 

 R hh'i- ever, the folly of such waste is realised, and hares are 



once more sensibly on the increase. Attempts have 

 also been made on the part of certain landowners to establish rabbit 

 warrens, but the rabbits have not proved equal to the climate, and 

 have invariably succumbed in winter to cold and hunger. 



III.— SHOOTING IN THE MARSHES 



There is, perhaps, no country in Europe with better marsh 

 shooting than Roumania. Along the banks of the Danube and in 

 Dobrutcha there are hundreds of lakes and ponds, on which swans 



