THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 413 



suddenly and most disaoreeablv reminded of this bv a feelinij of 

 cold on my feet. I looked down, and there was no more ground 

 to be seen ! The boat which had brought me was about a mile off, 

 and the geese were at once forgotten. My desperate shouting and 

 firing at short intervals roused the men, who, when they came up, 

 found me already half under water, and nearly frozen ! In some 

 seasons the ice melts so quickly, and the ground is so rapidly Hooded, 

 as altogether to prevent any sport, for the geese, seeing no food, 

 continue their journey without alighting. The only consolation then 

 is to bid farewell to the V-shaped flocks, which are to be seen flying 

 steadily at a great height, and to wish them au revoir till next year. 

 The species of geese obtained at Lake Ilmen are chiefly the grey- 

 lag, the bean and the pink-footed geese. Of swans, the whooper 

 is the commonest. A week or ten days after the geese, teal make 

 their appearance, and, later still, mallards and other species. Very 

 heavy bags (over three hundred in a day to one gun) have been 

 made on Lake Ilmen with decoys. In July and August, the grounds, 

 which in April were deep under water, afford capital snipe shooting 

 over dogs, double and common snipe being very numerous, and one 

 gun may, with a little luck, bring in over a hundred as the result of a 

 day's work. In the Siberian marshes, snipe are also found in great 

 numbers, but lately the game laws for Russia proper have been 

 extended to Siberia, where snipe used to be netted in spring, and the 

 price in the market towns of a snared bird was double that of a shot 

 one. Ducks are, of course, numerous all over Siberia, especially in the 

 Kainsk district, where lakes and marshes cover hundreds of miles of 

 country. I have been told that in the south-eastern corner of the 



