528 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. { December, 1906. 
tamed and called to the fist till it is ‘hard-penned.’ It is then 
entered to jerboa-rats let loose at the end of a string. A rat with 
a broken leg is next released in front of a greyhound pup of 
‘two months old ” and the Kestril is cast off: the rat is taken 
pups start in pursuit, the Kestril is cast off. The pups make a 
dash and the Kestril makes a stoop, and so on alternately till the 
rat is taken. After a few maimed rats have been taken by the 
pups and the hawk, a sound rat is released in front of the pups, 
but a thin strip of wood, three or four inches in length, is passed 
transversely through the rat’s ears to prevent its entering a hole. 
Behind the pups, the Kestril is cast off. ‘“ It is obvious,” says 
the author, “ that two-month old pups cannot in the open country 
overtake or seize a sound ‘two-legged rat.’ After about thirty or 
forty stoops the rat is taken. The sport is just like gazelle-hawk- 
ing with a charkh and greyhounds.” 
n an old Persian MS. on Falconry, written in India, it is 
contemptuously stated that, “The Kestril is of no use except that 
its feathers may be usedto imp the broken feathers of Merlins.” 
No wonder that, in the olden days of falconry, it was assigned 
to a “ knave.” 
