PEREGRINE FALCON. 203 



keepers, our hawks and falcons are slowly and 

 steadily decreasing year by year, and the time will 

 undoubtedly come when these interesting and histori- 

 cal birds will be extinct and things of the past. Of the 

 larger birds of prey, the Peregrine Falcon is the com- 

 monest, as it breeds for the most part in inaccessible 

 positions. These, as we might expect, it finds in the 



PEREGRINE FALCON. 



wildest and most secluded parts of Scotland and Ire- 

 land, but it still breeds in a few spots in England. 

 Three years ago, a neighbouring farmer, finding a 

 number of his partridges killed, set a trap in his fields 

 and within an hour a beautiful female Falcon was 

 caught, which he still possesses stuffed. This bird, 

 we concluded, had come over from Salisbury Cathe- 



