2 So FALCON R Y 



have flown they have had to take the second place, as regards 

 brilliancy of execution and deadliness of stoop and style, to 

 some one or two of the passage hawks which have accompanied 

 them to their hawking ground, and this will ever be the case 

 when both varieties are given a fair trial. 



Naturally, the hawk which has spent so long a period in a 

 wild state, during which she has imbibed a holy horror of man 

 and all his works, regarding him as her natural foe, is very 

 much more difficult to train at first than the nestling, which 

 requires at any rate little or no taming, and whose idea of man 

 is that he is a being created in order to bring food to hawks. 

 First, however, how are passage hawks to be obtained ? They 

 may be caught doubtless in many parts of the United Kingdom, 

 where, every autumn about the middle of October, peregrines 

 appear, for a day or two, on ground where they certainly do 

 not breed, and where they are very seldom seen at other 

 times. Thus falcons have been taken, at huts specially put 

 out for the purpose, both in Northamptonshire and on the 

 downs of Wiltshire. These no doubt were stragglers from 

 the great army of birds of all kinds and descriptions which 

 annually migrates from north to south at the commencement 

 of winter. Upon the outskirts of this army hang the falcons 

 and other raptorial birds ; whether they are themselves follow- 

 ing the same migratory instinct that urges onward the other 

 innumerable varieties of birds, or whether they are simply 

 following their food as it changes its quarters, it is -impossible 

 to say. 



In North Brabant in Holland, near to Eindhoven, there is 

 a vast wild plain or heath, and this plain appears to lie in the 

 very centre of the track which the great concourse of migratory 

 birds follows. Wild fowl of every kind, cranes, larks, linnets, 

 all varieties of birds may be seen, during October and 

 November, passing over this plain and steadily pursuing their 

 route southwards. Here, too, come the falcons, first the 

 haggards and tiercels, after them the young falcons of the 

 year, and here from time immemorial have they been cap- 



