HOME LIFE 185 



be that the treatment applied as a remedy aggravates the mis- 

 chief already done. It is much easier to reduce a hawk than 

 to get flesh on her again. The beginner should therefore be 

 very sure that his hawk has been overfed before he shortens her 

 daily supply of food. By making a mistake on the other side, 

 and feeding up a hawk which is already a bit above herself, the 

 worst inconvenience that is likely to follow, in the case of an 

 eyess, is a little delay in getting her down to the lure. Passage 

 hawks, especially for a while after they have first been reclaimed, 

 are of course liable to be lost if too highly fed, for when dis- 

 inclined to come to the lure or fist they are apt to rake away 

 after chance quarry. But they may be full-fleshed and strong, 

 and yet be eager for their food. It is a great mistake, though 

 a very common one, to suppose that a thin hawk is necessarily 

 a hungry one. Whether a hawk is fat or thin is a question of 

 days, whereas it is a question of hours whether she is hungry or 

 not. For instance, a peregrine may have had nearly a full crop 

 every day for a week, and yet if on the eighth day she has only 

 a very light feed in the morning she will be as hungry as a 

 hunter on the ninth day in the afternoon. The tendency now- 

 adays is rather to overfeed hawks, and to forget the old maxim 

 about a fat hawk making " a lean horse and an empty purse." 

 The amateur has been so loudly warned against keeping a thin 

 hawk that in avoiding this reproach he falls into the other 

 extreme, and attempts to fly his hawk when she is really not 

 sharp-set at all. 



Washed meat — so commonly used by the old falconers, that 

 it may almost be said to have been a normal daily diet — is now 

 but rarely given, unless, indeed, where a parsimonious or care- 

 less owner has neglected to provide fresh meat, and tainted beef 

 is soaked and squeezed so as to make it available as food. The 

 proper mode of preparing washed meat is to take it when quite 

 fresh and immerse it for a while in cold water, and then dry it 

 in a warm place. Part of its nutritive power — of its goodness, 

 in fact — will then have disappeared, and what remains will digest 

 quickly, leaving the hawk more keen and sooner hungry than 

 if she had swallowed the same quantity of unwashed meat. For 

 the smaller hawks it is less suitable than for the larger ; and if 

 it is desired to take them down a peg or two, it will generally 

 be found best either to resort to a diet naturally light, such as 

 rabbit or sheep's heart, or to reduce a little in quantity the 

 accustomed allowance of their usual food. When a merlin is a 

 bit bumptious, independent, and disobedient, her morning ration 



