Numerous other examples of the rapid disappearance of certain species in our Fatherland might be quoted here. Unfortunately we have, on the whole, very little right to reproach the people of Southern Europe on the subject of their custom of carrying on a systematic massacre of birds; for we ourselves are always trapping thrushes and larks, and there is the shooting of the woodcock in spring. There can be no doubt that, if we would give up this spring shooting of the woodcock, this bird, which has so won the heart of the German sportsman, would breed abundantly in our forests. On sporting estates in the wooded hills in Baden I have had occasion to observe this bird nesting; and it is to be regretted that German sportsmen, who in other matters obey the customs of the chase with such scrupulous conscientiousness, do not spare this bird in the spring-time, although they are thus extirpating from their hunting grounds a bird that breeds in the woodlands of our country. The North American woodcock is in process of extinction, for it also is not spared by sportsmen in its breeding grounds, and it is just as little in safety from them in its winter quarters. It is thus one of the disappearing birds of North America, whilst our European woodcock is not so much exposed to harm from systematic pursuit either in its partly inaccessible northern breeding grounds or in its winter abode. But it is indeed difficult to abolish old, deep-rooted practices that are no longer abreast of the times. “Che vuole, signore?--il piacere della caccia!” was the reply of an Italian to a tourist who remonstrated with him on the subject of the extraordinarily widespread destruction of doves by means of nets in Northern Italy. The same answer would probably be given by the monks[29] of certain islands of the Mediterranean, who, keeping up an old custom, kill countless multitudes of turtle-doves during their migration. These are their favourite dainties, and they also export them largely in a preserved state. So, too, it will be a difficult matter to obtain from German sportsmen the complete abandonment of their pleasant spring campaign against the woodcock. Through the very interesting experiments of the Duke of Northumberland, who had marks put upon numbers of young woodcock, it has been ascertained that large numbers of them undoubtedly spend the whole winter in England. Now, if Professor Boettger and Wilhelm Schuster are right in their conclusions, drawn from similar observations, as to the return of the conditions of the Tertiary period, and if the species of birds they observed used at an earlier date not infrequently to winter with us, a more extended protection for the woodcock ought, at any rate, to be introduced.