62 PARTRIDGES 



language of the sport was once an indis- 

 pensable part of the education of any one 

 who could pretend to gentle blood. 



Now only our London 'mews' or 

 ' places where hawks are kept ' and the 

 somewhat Gilbertian office of Hereditary 

 Grand Falconer of England remain to 

 remind us of the noble art of Falconry, 

 though there are still some twenty or 

 thirty country gentlemen in England 

 who keep and fly their own hawks. Of 

 the twenty kinds of falcons and hawks 

 which were commonly used in sport, the 

 peregrine falcon, the goshawk, and the 

 hen sparrow-hawk were generally used 

 to take partridges. 



When hawking first fell out of favour, 

 there was nothing ready to take its place, 

 for the fowling-piece of the day was a 

 cumbrous and unreliable engine. Thus 

 while arms and ammunition were slowly 

 improving, there ensued an interregnum 

 in the world of sport, during which the 

 practice of netting partridges, now rightly 

 considered as arrant poaching, was 



