THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
private land or on Crown lands, is prohibited between March 1 and June 29 
(St Peter’s Day). In the governments of St Petersburg, Novgorod and 
Pskoff the close time extends to July 15, but exception is made in the case 
of Capercaillie and Black -game which may be shot in the spring just 
before the breeding season. Licences are granted by the department of the 
official who corresponds to the German “ Ober-Jagermeister,” and the 
penalty for shooting without one is a fine which if not paid may result in 
the confiscation of gun and dogs. Quail shooting is more or less confined 
to the South of Russia. 
ROUMANIA. — ^The quail is perhaps the most widely distributed game 
bird on the plains of Roumania, and is shot only over dogs, chiefly in 
the millet fields, or on the stubbles just after harvest. In good years, and 
on well -chosen ground during August and September, a good shot would 
have no difficulty in bagging his fifty brace a day. For such sport, however, 
a good dog is needed— -one that can bear both heat and thirst— and English 
pointers have been found to be the best for this work.* 
DALMATIA. — ^The Crown Prince Rudolf, describing the result of a few 
weeks spent on the coasts of Dalmatia and Istria, with excursions into 
the Herzegovina, says : “ Quails were often observed in Lacroma from 
the 10th to the end of March,” the period of his visit. He found no more 
until April 17, in a field of oats in that island. In the neighbourhood of 
Trebinje the flight of quail is often so large that very good shooting may 
be obtained.! 
ITALY. — In the months of April and May, when the quail arrive so 
exhausted by their passage over the Mediterranean that they are barely 
able to make the land, special trains take crowds of shooters from Rome 
to the seashore to meet the tired birds, which are thereupon slaughtered 
by hundreds in the land which they had hoped to make their summer 
home, while even greater destruction is effected by the nets spread to 
intercept them on landing. 
Count Scheibler reports that there is not the necessary protectioh for 
the breeding of game in Italy that would encourage the landowners to 
preserve it on their farms. Not only is there a lack of control during the 
breeding season on the part of the police, but the laws regulating exclusive 
* Prince Nicolas Ghika, Sport in Europe, p. 271. 
t Crown Prince Rudolf, Sport and Ornithology (1889), p. 632. 
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