THE REVIVAL OF FALCONRY. 79 
adrift (after forty-five years’ service under the St. Albans family) 
on a beggarly pension of £50 a-year! Why do not some of our 
Parliamentary Reformers take measures either to induce the Grand 
Falconer to give some value to the nation for the £1000 a-year 
paid to him, or to reduce the amount? 
This questionable action almost proved a death-blow to modern 
Falconry ; for from that time to the formation of “The Falconry 
Club,” which has just been started, at the suggestion, and by 
the exertions, of the Editor of this Magazine (to whom I gave 
for that purpose the use of my entire establishment of falconers 
and hawks), there has been in existence no central depot to which 
the amateur could have recourse for instruction, for assistance in 
procuring hawks, or for the temporary care of them. Thus it was 
impossible for a beginner to take up Falconry as an occasional 
pursuit and in moderation. Having to provide all his own 
resources, he had either to let it alone, or to go into it as a regular 
business taking up the whole of his time—an undertaking for 
which few are inclined. 
I am not ignoring the fact that Falconry has never ceased to be 
carried on during the past ten years. The Rev. Gage Earle Free- 
man (“ Peregrine” of ‘ The Field’), the apostle of modern Falconry, 
has from time to time rendered invaluable service to the cause, 
and attracted public attention to it by charming articles and letters 
on Falconry penned in his own most characteristic and genial 
style, to say nothing of his separately published and important 
works on the subject. My late friend Mr. Ewen, of Ewenfield 
(Ayrshire), used to kill some three hundred grouse every year 
with falcons. Another friend, Major Hawkins Fisher, of Stroud 
' Castle, has constantly done good work at Partridges and Rooks; 
and, that select few, the “Old Hawking Club,” with their clever 
falconer, John Frost, have been most successful in flying at Rooks 
and other quarry on Salisbury Plain. Last spring I believe they 
killed about one hundred and eighty Rooks; and a Goshawk 
belonging to them took some hundred and fifty rabbits in the 
course of two or three months in the summer. But all of these, 
including the “ Old Hawking Club,”’—the number of members of 
which are strictly limited,—have been purely private establishments, 
of which it has been impossible for an outsider to make any use 
whatever. 
I myself even have been compelled before now to let a season 
