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CHAPTER VI 



THE CHAMOIS 

 By W. A. BAILLIE-GROHMAN 



CHAMOIS are to be found in all the higher mountain systems of 

 Central and Southern Europe. They are indigenous to timber- 

 line regions from the Caucasus to the Pyrenees, and from the 

 Carpathians to the Alps of the Epirus. Switzerland and the 

 Austrian Alps have, however, always been their chief home. To 

 the sportsman the latter region, with its large estates and sport- 

 loving landed aristocracy, offers a much more inviting field than 

 does Switzerland, where the republican spirit and peasant 

 proprietorship make the preservation of game by individuals 

 almost impossible, and the chase in consequence uncertain and 

 difficult. It is fair, however, to add that the efforts made by 

 several of the Swiss Cantons in the course of the last ten or 

 twenty years will presumably prevent the extermination of the 

 chamois in Switzerland, which but for strictly enforced regula- 

 tions would at one time have been only a matter of a few years. 

 That the democratic spirit of republics is not one favourable 

 to the preservation of game, we can see by the dire results it 

 has worked in the Great Transatlantic Federation, where some 

 species offers naturce have practically become extinct. 



The experience of those who have killed or tried to kill 

 chamois in the Pyrenees or in Albania would show that sport 

 in those countries is somewhat uncertain, and to obtain it 

 lengthy expeditions have to be undertaken, which in the- 

 majority of cases, the writer's not excepted, are not sue- 



