246 REMIXISCEXCES OF A SPORTSMAN. 



side of the sea. This fowler did with such industry 

 and dexterity lay wait for them, that not so much as 

 one escaped him. He took at least twelve hawks 

 every hour. The manner thus: " he himself lay hid 

 behind a little basket, before which he had levelled 

 a square flat or floor, about two paces long and broad, 

 being two or three paces distant from the basket ; 

 in the borders of this floor he had pitched down, 

 or thrust into the ground, sis stakes at due dis- 

 tances, of about the thickness of one's thumb. On 

 the top of each, was a nick cut in, upon which was 

 hung a net made of fine green thread. In the middle 

 of the floor stood a stake a cubit high, to the top of 

 which a cord was bound, which reached as far as the 

 fowler who lay behind the basket. To this same line, 

 lying loose, were many little birds fastened, which picked 

 up grains of corn on the floor. Now, when the fowler 

 saw a hawk coming from afar off from the sea-coast, 

 shaking the line, he made these birds to flicker up and 

 down; which the sparrow-hawks (as they are notably 

 long sighted) espying at least half a league off, came 

 flying full speed, and rushed upon the nets with that 

 force to strike at the birds, that, being entangled, were 

 taken. The hawks being allured into the nets, and 

 caught by this artifice, the fowler thrusts their whole 

 wings up to the shoulders into certain linen cloths, sewn 

 up for that purpose, which our falconers call mayling 

 or trussing of hawks. Thus niayled or trussed up, 

 he left them on the ground, so unable to help them- 

 selves that they could not stir nor struggle, much less 

 disengage or deliver themselves. No man could easily 

 imagine whence such a multitude of sparrow-hawks 

 could come, for in two hours' time that we were spec- 



