[21] On the part of the Government and the local authorities everything that is possible is being done to settle this difficulty. But unfortunately their efforts seem to have little success.
[22] Cf. my book With Flashlight and Rifle, p. 736, where a statement by Professor P. Matschie, the Custodian of the Royal Zoological Museum at Berlin, will be found, bearing out the truth of what is here remarked.
[23] During the last few years handsome groups have also been set up in the museums of other places, such as Munich, Stuttgart, and Carlsruhe.
[24] The ibex, which was once also common in Germany, has been found by Dr. G. Merzbacher in the central Tian-Shan region in the form of Ibex sibirica merzbacheri: and two years ago by G. Leisewitz in such great numbers that the appearance of flocks of hundreds of them was a daily experience.
[25] The Hudson Bay Company put on the market in the year 1891 1,358 skins of the musk ox (Ovibos moschatus), but only 271 in the year 1901. In the year 1878 the same company sold 102,715 skins of the Canadian beaver, but only 44,200 in the year 1892. A striking example of the results of excessive exploitation of hunting grounds!
[26] Besides other sources, I take these data from an interesting article by C. Brock, in the periodical Die Jagd. This writer estimates the area devoted to the chase in the German Empire at 54,000,000 hectares; the number of shots fired in a year at game at 16,000,000, besides some 6,000,000 shots fired at animals that are not game. He rightly notes that for the individual the whole business of sport is a losing or non-productive occupation, but one of productive value for the households of the country folk, as about 130,000,000 marks are annually spent upon it.
[27] Professor Haberer lately found strychnine in use in various ways in many places in Eastern Asia.
[28] See, amongst other writings of his, Outdoor Pastimes, by Theodore Roosevelt.
[29] On the destruction of the turtle-dove (Turtur turtur, L.) during its migration to Greece, see Otmar Reiser, Curator of the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Materialen zu einer Ornis Balcanica. At Syra one sportsman shoots as many as a hundred in a day; at Paxos, according to the Grand Duke Ludwig Salvator, they are killed in heaps. The lands of the Strophades Islands are completely equipped with huge falling snares and shooting-stands for the systematic massacre of the “Trigones.” Everywhere in Greece when the cry of “Trigones!” is heard, fire is opened upon the newcomers.
[30] Expeditions in uninhabited districts have sometimes been entirely supplied by shooting wild animals.