306 EEMIXISCENCES OF A SPORTSMAX. 



loaders — no serried ranks of fattened pheasants, shortly 

 to darken the air, and then to be consigned wholesale to 

 the dealers at Leadenhall; above all, there was no 

 " keeper's tree," no kennel weather-boarding suspended 

 from those gibbet-like branches, or impaled upon those 

 slovenly damp slabs. How many a splendid specimen, 

 alas ! of our rarer fauna has mouldered into a wet 

 sodden skeleton, till the race has become extinct. There 

 is a bird, rare indeed now, but not so rare but that any 

 one who can see the lovely things in heaven and earth 

 may perchance at times gladden his eyes with the sight 

 — whose generation is yet with us, though fast passing 

 away. If you are out and up on some of our open table- 

 lands when the first streak of dawn is in the east, you 

 may see his form glide like a falling star, dashing, per- 

 haps, at the earliest rook, or chasing, more in play than 

 in earnest, some lark, who sings as he shifts at the stoop ; 

 or it is just possible, partridge shooter, leg-weary and 

 crest-fallen, tried beyond endurance by that wild, un- 

 ruly, and most wilful setter, who now for the thirtieth 

 time runs up his birds, your last chance as the still sha- 

 dows lengthen, that your soul may be stirred by the 

 sweeping stoop of the falcon, cleaving the air with fatal 

 energy of wing, striking his game to the earth, and then 

 gone as he came — whence, whither ? We have in 

 these islands of ours but one hawk that can do this, 

 and he does it but seldom ; for neither partridges nor 

 pheasants form the staple food of the peregrine falcon. 

 Under the overhanging ledge of some Scandinavian 

 rock, midway between the cold sky and the surge, on 

 Ailsa Craig, or inland perhaps, on the granite peaks 

 of Arran, his eyrie is placed There you may see 

 the old birds in turn chasing the sea-fowl, the gull. 



