THE DECLINE OF THE SPORT. 205 



in the middle of the seventeenth century. Ah-eady in 

 the sixteenth century it had been forbidden to hawk 

 from Easter until the corn was reaped ; and althougli 

 Hentzer, who wrote his Itinerary in 1598, affirms that it 

 was in his time generally practised by the English no- 

 bility and gentry, yet it was evident that flxlconry was 

 then on the decline, and not pursued with its former 

 characteristic enthusiasm. 



One of the most deadly blows given to this field sport 

 was the introduction of fire arms. As soon as the gim 

 had reached a certain point of perfection, and the sports- 

 man discovered how much more readily* a more exten- 

 sive warfare might be carried on against game, the 

 falconer gradually gave up his hawks, and the gun, 

 pointers, and sj^auiels took their place. Another ob- 

 stacle to hawking on a grand scale was in some respects 

 the great improvement in agriculture and the enclosure 

 of fields, waste lands, and commons ; but there are 

 still very extensive tracts of mountains and plains in 

 England, Scotland, and Ireland where hawking may be 

 pursued with infinite pleasure and satisfaction to the 

 falconer ; and I entertain a sanguine hope tliat the time 

 may yet arrive when this manly field sport may once 

 more be revived, and the mania of battue shooting be 

 considerably diminished, which really has little to re- 

 commend it except the outrageous passion of sportsmen 

 of the present day. Hawking has this great advantage 

 over the gun ; with the peregrine and some larger 

 species of hawks, you fly them at the heron, the wood- 



. * Although game -was destroyed readily, it was not slaughtered by 

 ■wholesale, as at the present period, at battues, where cart-loads of hares 

 and pheasants strew the floor of the hall of the mansion at the end of a 

 day's sport. 



P 3 



