EUROPEAN GAME 
year. Only the north, a few places in Central France, the neighbourhood of 
Paris and Normandy hold any game. 
SPAIN. A special article on this country is provided by my friend, Mr 
Abel Chapman. 
PORTUGAL. In Portugal there are no game laws. Game belongs 
(theoretically) to the owners of the land if the property is enclosed, and that 
is indeed rare. Even the possession of a gun licence is seldom required or 
asked for. There are, or were, Royal deer parks where red deer and boar 
were till recently numerous. There are also other private parks which 
contain deer and boar and a few red deer and fallow are still found and 
shot in the unenclosed lands of Pancas, Serra de Ficalho, Serra de Penha 
Garcia and Monfortinho. There are also a few Spanish ibex and roe near 
Gerez in the mountain ranges. Woodcock, quail and bustard are also 
found in Portugal, and in the winter large flights of duck visit the estuary 
of the Tagus and the lagoons of d’Albufeira, d’El-Rei, Obidos and St Andre 
de Melides. 
GERMANY. The law of all German states vests the shooting rights 
in the property of the soil, wherefore all land is preserved. The elk still 
exists in a wild state in the forest of Ibenhorst, East Prussia, the killing 
of surplus males being reserved for Royalty and its guests. The game 
par excellence of Germany is the red deer, which, although much dete- 
riorated both in size and number, is still the most important beast of 
the chase. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Royalty nearly 
succeeded in acquiring the sole right of the chase of deer, but the lawyers 
managed to obviate this by creating “ the high and the low ” chase. As 
an instance of the enormous stock of red deer in the Middle Ages it may 
be mentioned that John George II of Saxony (1656-1680) shot 43,649 
head of red deer in twenty -four years, whilst his father killed 35,421, 
amongst them a stag weighing 61 st. 11 lb. 
Stag -hunting and shooting was in the Middle Ages made an art by the 
Royal sportsmen, in which the minutest details were attended to with 
a punctiliousness incomprehensible in modern days. At that time the 
killing of a stag by a poacher was a greater offence than slaying a man. 
We need not dwell on the chase in Germany in the Middle Ages as there is 
already a voluminous literature on the subject. 
Doubtless the stags of those days were magnificent, and German sports- 
men always point to the great heads of Moritzburg as the best examples 
killed in Germany. I think, however, there is no proof that the largest 
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