EUROPEAN GAME 
INTRODUCTION 
I N most of the European countries we see in the game laws of the 
present day a triumph of the democracy, for, with the exception of 
Austria, Hungary and the German Empire, where the old feudal 
relations between the nobles and the people still exist, game is only 
permitted in large quantities with the will or interest of the people of 
that country. The game laws of the Middle Ages preserved the privi- 
leges of the chase to the Court, the nobles, and the clergy, whilst those 
who trespassed against them were rewarded with death in the case of 
the deer -slayer and sound floggings for any first offences. The opposition 
to such harsh treatment grew with the ages and culminated in France 
at last in the Revolution. In the British Isles the strict code of the Plan- 
tagenets appears to have generally lapsed until it was revived in its worst 
form by the Stuarts. After the Commonwealth Charles II was clever 
enough to see the futility of crushing the legitimate rights of the people, 
and allowed them to slaughter wild deer indiscriminately in Crown 
forests and elsewhere. In France after the Revolution sporting legislation 
appears to have been abandoned, and even to-day small estates where 
game is preserved are few and far between. The same democratic spirit 
occurs in Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Greece and Italy, with the result 
that the great store of game which once flourished in those countries is 
gone, probably never to be seen again. 
In Norway the feeling has always been that the native sportsman must 
enjoy the privileges of the chase with certain advantages over the travelling 
foreigner who is willing to spend his money there. This, again, is all 
against the increase of game as well as a block to the advent of money 
in a country sadly in need of it. There is now, however, a distinct move 
on the part of wealthy farmers to preserve elk, for they have at length 
discovered that they may still have their winter meat and can attract a 
silly Englishman to shoot it for them and pay highly for the privilege. 
The case of the reindeer is quite different. That animal has been harried 
to the verge of extinction by an army of young men armed with Krag- 
Jorgensen rifles, for with the single exception of the mountainous region 
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