CHAPTER X 



Hawking 



''True to the season, o'er our sea-boat shore. 

 The sailing osprey high is seen to soar. 

 With broad unmoving wing, and circling slow, 

 Marks each loose straggler in the deep below; 

 Sweeps down like lightning! plunges with a roar! 

 And bears his struggling victim to the shored 



— Alexander Wilson 



LET no one suppose I am writing here of 

 that most ancient of sports — falconr> or 

 hawking — in the sense that is usually in- 

 tended, a sport that consists in the pursuit of game 

 by trained and captive hawks. In the ruins of 

 Ninevah a bas-relief has been found representing a 

 falconer bearing a hawk on his wrist. In England 

 hawking has been pursued from the earliest times, 

 and, although its height of popularity was proba- 

 bly reached during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 

 yet it still exists, as a sport there today as is at- 



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