78 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
together without years of labour and close observation of the natural 
aptitude of different individuals. One I took from bis work as an 
engineer, another as a gamekeeper, a third as odd man to an Irish 
squireen, and it took me just three years to trace one of them 
whose handiness, as a boy (under the Maharajah), I had remarked 
long ago, but of whom I had lost sight. 
There were other difficulties ten years ago in the way of all who 
cared to take up falconry, but who could only do so on a small 
scale. Keeping hawks without a falconer was a drag and a tie. If 
left behind to the mercy of keepers or stable boys, during the tem- 
porary absence of their owners, they were almost certain to come 
to grief; while taking them about on visits did not always answer. 
I used to do this until 1 found my friends so unappreciative with 
regard {6 hawks, that if I continued this course | should have very 
few visits to pay! Having no falconer then, I had to choose 
between my friends and my hawks. I chose the latter,—to my 
mind, the truest friends a man can have,—but I cannot quite 
expect other and less enthusiastic falconers to look at things in 
exactly the same light as I did. 
Many would have enjoyed the use of a hawk or two for the 
hawking season, who did not care to be bothered with them 
during the long period of moulting and uselessness. Yet the 
supply was too uncertain to make it safe to get rid of the hawks 
when they began to moult, as should always be done except in the 
case of Goshawks or special favourites. It does not pay to moult 
a Peregrine or Merlin, since their performances after moulting 
rarely come up to their first season’s form. 
So long as the Hereditary Grand Falconer of England, the Duke 
of St. Albans kept hawks (for doing—or not doing—which, he 
receives £1000 a-year from the State) it was, of course, possible to 
place hawks temporarily, or for the moult, under the care of his 
falconer, John Pells. Pells was always most obliging, and had 
plenty of time to attend to the wishes of amateurs, since the Duke’s 
establishment was limited to half-a-dozen hawks, on which, in- 
cluding the falconer’s wages, he expended only £200 a-year out of 
the £1000 he received and, I believe, still receives. But some 
ten years since the present Duke, in an economical fit, thought 
he might as well save a little more of the sum allowed him by the 
State as Grand Falconer; so, heedless of the motto “ noblesse 
oblige,” he broke up the establishment, and sent poor old Pells 
