48 FALCONJM. 



and fixed his talons in the back of a heifer, which, in her 

 fright, rushed with all speed towards the cattle-house. On 

 the way home, the animal passed a gate-post, of which 

 the eagle thought to take advantage ; for whilst retaining 

 hold of his prey with the one talon, he firmly grasped the 

 post with the other, no doubt with the intention of bring- 

 ing up the runaway. But in this matter the bird some- 

 what miscalculated his powers; for instead of thereby 

 staying the headlong career of the heifer, her impetus 

 was such, that the lord of the air was himself actually 

 riven in twain." 



Mr. Watters, in his useful little work on the Birds of 

 Ireland, mentions, " that the late Sir Charles Giesecke, in 

 a lecture, stated his having been present at a hawking 

 party in Norway where a Gyr-Falcon was flown at a hare : 

 the bird clutched the hare with one foot, and the stump 

 of a tree with the other, with such tenacity that from the 

 speed of the hare, the leg of the Gyr-Falcon was torn 

 from its socket, and being unable to extricate its claws, 

 both perished." 



They manage these matters better in the East. Sir 

 John Malcolm, in his Sketches of Persia, says on this sub- 

 ject : " When at Shiraz, the ambassador had received a 

 present of a very fine royal Falcon. Before going out, I 

 had been amused at seeing the head falconer, a man of 

 great experience in his department, put upon this bird a 

 pair of leathers, which he fitted to its thigh with as much 

 care as if he had been the tailor of a fashionable horse- 

 man. I enquired the reason of so unusual a proceeding. 

 You will learn that, said the consequential master of the 

 Hawks, when you see our sport ; and I was convinced, at 

 the period he predicted, of the old fellow's knowledge of 

 his business. 



'' The first hare seized by the Falcon was very strong, 



