TRAINING AND ENTERING 91 



of a fortnight the bcst-intentioned efforts to subdue her wild 

 instincts. It will be well in all cases, and will save an immensity 

 of time and trouble, to reduce the eyess to some extent as soon 

 as she is taken up. For my own part I incline to doing, even 

 at this early stage, a bit of mild physicking. Half a Cockle's pill 

 for a peregrine or one-eighth for a merlin will do no manner of 

 harm. At all events the allowance of food must be cut down. 

 Hack hawks, when taken up, should be as round as balls and 

 as bumptious as undergraduates. They know not what it is to 

 be really sharp-set ; and unless dosed they make quite a favour 

 of eating at all during the first two or three days of real captivity. 

 Continue feeding them at the rate they have been accustomed 

 to, and you will lose patience before you can bring them under 

 any sort of control. In fact, you will not do so at all. Yet I 

 do not mean that they should be made thin. There is, it is 

 true, no longer any fear of hunger-traces, but a thin hawk is a 

 weak hawk, and sometimes even a spoilt hawk. Her small 

 feathers lose their gloss ; her flight feathers grow weak and 

 brittle, and are ready to break on slight provocation ; her nares 

 lose colour, and begin to harbour mites. In short, a thin hawk 

 is an abomination and a disgrace. She must therefore not be 

 either over-fed or under-fed, but just made hungry enough 

 before each meal-time to be really keen after her food. And 

 as she has accumulated during her probationary time of adoles- 

 cence more or less internal fat, the quickest and easiest way to 

 get rid of it is to give her a mild dose or two of purgative 

 medicine, and some rangle, as recommended in the chapter on 

 ailments. Hack hawks and all other eyesses must be taught to 

 jump and fly to the fist. If long-winged, they must be made to 

 the lure. And in all cases they should be thoroughly broken 

 to the hood. 



Thus we have arrived at the same stage with our eyesses 

 and with our wild-caught hawks ; and the subsequent stages 

 are very nearly the same with each. Carrying (on the fist — I 

 do not mean the vice of that ilk) is still a sine qua non. No 

 hawk can have too much of it. I have read in some hawking 

 books a reference to hawks being " too tame." The phrase, 

 as applied to a trained hawk, is not very well chosen, and might 

 mislead a beginner. Some of the most deadly hawks ever flown 

 have been as " tame as parrots." When a very tame hawk flies 

 badly it is not, as a rule, because she is too tame, but because 

 she is too fat, or, more likely still, because she is not properly 

 sharp-set at the moment of flying. Some remarks on the con- 

 ditioning of hawks will be found later on. In the meantime let 



