3o8 SPORT IN EUROPE 



Continental country, with the possible exception of Austria- Hungary, 

 will show such abundance and variety of sport. At present it must 

 reluctantly be confessed that there is too much revenue-making and 

 too little encouragement to preserve. Heavy taxation combines 

 with the existing agricultural depression to preclude any but the 

 wealthiest landowners preserving game, and such laws as exist 

 against poaching are either treated as a dead letter, or else, even if 

 enforced, absurdly inadequate. Considering the variety of country in 

 Spain — the mountains with their bears, their ibex, and their chamois, 

 not to mention trout and salmon rivers ; the plains with their boar and 

 deer and bustards ; the marshes with their teemino^ wealth of wild 

 fowl (such bags as are made in few other corners of Europe) — the 

 total amount of sport obtained in the peninsula is simply ridiculous. 

 For this result it would almost look as if the sportsmen are in 

 a measure to blame. Foxes are hunted only by the Calpe 

 pack at Gibraltar. Pig-sticking there might be — we have for years 

 stuck pig near Tangier over country every bit as bad — but for 

 some reason or other there is none.* Still, I must give a picture 

 of the sport as it is, not as it might be, and I dare say the best 

 arrangement will be to take the beasts and birds in order. Such 

 a plan has no doubt its drawbacks, but the same might probably 

 be said of any other. 



It will first be convenient to ""ive a list of the oame, with the 



o o 



Spanish name for each : — 



* I understand, however, that a movement is on foot for starting pig-sticking next year, 

 the promoters being the Duke of Arion, on his estate Malpica, in the province of Toledo, 

 and the Uuke of Medinaceh, at Almoraima, near Gibraltar. May success attend their 

 etibrts I — F. 



