94 AET AND PRACTICE OF HAWKING 



the sort of quarry which it is ultimately intended to pursue. 

 Perhaps two out of every three eyess merlins may, in skilful 

 hands, be thus dealt with. But they will perhaps not begin at 

 once. I remember well the first day when Princess was taken 

 out, as the first of a nest of four merlins intended to be entered. 

 It was on the open down, where the larks were very strong. 

 She refused eight in succession, merely making a pretence of 

 following, and sometimes not even that. But at the ninth, 

 which got up very near her, she flew with the utmost pluck and 

 skill, and, after at least half a dozen good stoops, put it into a 

 potato patch, where it could not immediately be found. She 

 then refused three more, and ultimately, thinking perhaps that 

 it was long past dinner-time, caught the thirteenth lark in 

 good style. Another year Colonel Sanford and I took out 

 two jack-merlins — the advance-guard of the hack hawks — very 

 early in the season, to be entered at the same time. We threw 

 them off at the same lark. The hawk which was nearest to it 

 refused : the other went on and killed the quarry. Sparrow- 

 hawks will generally fly, if in yarak, without being entered arti- 

 ficially. With peregrines there is generally more difficulty. As 

 for those of them which are intended for game or duck, they 

 belong to the other category, and will be referred to later as 

 hawks of the mountee. But passage peregrines, coming to the 

 falconer as they do late in the autumn, will first be flown at 

 rooks or gulls from the fist. With each of these quarry there 

 will probably be trouble. For the wild hawk does not, as a 

 rule, fly at rooks, unless when hard driven for food, nor is she 

 much addicted to gulls, except at breeding-times, when she has 

 many mouths to feed. If, when the time comes for her to be 

 entered, she is started straight away at a rook or gull, without 

 a make-hawk as companion, she is almost sure to refuse, or take 

 no notice at all of it. Possibly, if she is first flown at a white 

 pigeon, in the same place and way as afterwards a gull is sure to 

 be found, and flies well at the pigeon, she will afterwards go for 

 the gull. But for entering rook-hawks, where no make-hawk can 

 be used, a bagged quarry or two is generally found necessary. 



When once a hawk has taken one of the quarry at which 

 she is intended to be flown, she may be allowed to eat it if it is 

 to her taste. But if its flesh is not of an appetising or palatable 

 kind — as, for instance, rook or gull — a ruse should be adopted to 

 induce her to believe that the prize is more valuable than it 

 really is. A freshly-killed pigeon, or part of one, should be 

 smuggled under the hawk's foot as she is pluming the dead rook 

 or gull. There will be no difficulty in practising this innocent 



