256 HAWKING. 



burden, flew with it a considerable way to the shore. I 

 marked the place, and recovered the teal, with half of its 

 head eaten, otherwise uninjured. Last summer, a wild- 

 duck reared its young brood in a bay of Loch Lomond. 

 They were reduced to a few by a small hawk. My brother 

 saw it pick one up as neatly as possible, and another day 

 the old duck was seen flapping its wings on the surface of 

 the water, and endeavouring to drive off the hawk. The 

 ducklings had all dived, but the first that popped up its 

 head was instantly seized and carried off. The best 

 powers, however, of these little poachers being only exerted 

 on their own behalf, and the nests of the larger falcons 

 being seldom found, the main stay of the falconer is the 

 peregrine. 



There is a gamekeeper in Dumbartonshine, who, when 

 a boy, had received some lessons from the late John 

 Anderson, of hawking memory, and, having also a natural 

 turn that way, has perhaps as good a knowledge of the art 

 as any one now alive. In a steep crag at the head of 

 Glen-Douglas, a pair of peregrines build every year. The 

 young are always taken by this man to be trained, and the 

 old ones never molested. If great trouble and pains be 

 taken, the young falcons may be fit for flying the first 

 season, and I shall now describe a day's hawking with this 

 keeper, which is a very novel spectacle to any one who has 

 not seen it before, and is always, like coursing, most 

 enjoyed by those ignorant of field-sports. 



Early one morning, about the beginning of October, the 

 keeper was on the stubble-field with a couple of peregrines 



