BRITISH SPORT PAST AND PRESENT 



constant presence of two or more wild peregrine falcons, living 

 very much indeed on my own and neighbours' partridges, not 

 only never drove our numerous partridges away, but was not 

 thought to do so ; whereas two or three miserably inferior 

 tame hawks, not to be named in the same week with the wild 

 ones, with reference to their ability to take partridges, were 

 believed to drive all our game away. Luckily it did not. On 

 the contrary, when hard shot, it was our neighbour's lands that 

 were bare, whilst ours, being kept quiet from the report of the 

 gun, were a land of plenty (for partridges) to our great content, 

 and I hope to our neighbour's disgust. But they stuck to 

 their text just the same ! 



' Every single flight, even at partridges, throughout the 

 day differs considerably from its predecessor and its successor. 

 The two best days I can remember were twelve partridges one 

 day and fourteen on the next (both in October). I once 

 remember kilhng a partridge with a nearly perfeei; game hawk 

 called " Lundy," from his birthplace in the Bristol Channel, 

 and who, before a bad neighbour killed him, to deliver a pigeon 

 from his clutches, had taken in his four years of service more 

 than 400 partridges, besides two kestrels, some falcons being 

 desperately fond of going at any wild hawk. This little fellow 

 had done enough one day, when a neighbour's keeper came up 

 and asked to see a flight. Too late, said I, the other hawks 

 being fed up. Just then the dog employed, a ceaseless worker 

 and finder, came to a dead point in some high clover. Quite 

 forgetting what I was about I struck the hawk's hood and cast 

 him off, but to my horror with his swivel in his jesses, and the 

 leash, a yard and a quarter long, and its button attached and 

 dangling down. Few hawks, I hope, thus adorned or en- 

 cumbered, have ever been asked to take partridges. But it 

 seemed to make little difference to this old hand. Up he went 

 in wide rings, and as fast, apparently, as ever, with his ridicu- 

 lous appendages ; when high enough, the partridges were 

 moved, and he stooped and killed one (for the keeper) with 

 little ado.' 



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