CHAMPAGNE HAWKING & FALCONRY CLUBS 363 



cated hawk is not as easy to handle as a barrel-organ, still they 

 have been able to make a better start than by those crude 

 efforts at * training a hawk for themselves ' which result in the 

 death of the subject to be trained and the hopeless disappoint- 

 ment of the trainer. 



A club on rather similar lines was started in France in 1866 

 under the title of the 'Champagne Hawking Club,' with M. 

 Alfred Werle as president, other members being M. Pierre 

 Pichot, Comte de Montebello, Vicomte de Grandmaison, 

 Comte Alphonse de Aldama, Count le Couteulx de Canteleu, 

 &c. John Barr was head falconer, and the country mainly 

 resorted to was in the plains near Chalons. A large establish- 

 ment was kept up, and a sincere desire was shown to follow 

 the best traditions of falconry ; but in 1869, owing to various 

 circumstances, the club came to an end, though the esta- 

 blishment was maintained for a year or so longer by the 

 Comte de Aldama. But the good which the club did in 

 reviving falconry in France may be traced by the existence in 

 that country of more than one excellent and able falconer who 

 might perhaps never have taken to the sport had it not been for 

 the fillip administered at a critical moment by the organisa^ 

 tion of so good an establishment as that of the Champagne 

 Club. 



In 1878 an English club was promoted on an ambitious 

 scale by Captain F. S. Dugmore under the title of the 

 Falconry Club. The head-quarters of the club were fixed at 

 the Alexandra Palace, Muswell Hill, near London, where the 

 hawks, sometimes forty in number, were kept on view and were 

 occasionally flown to the lure or at bagged pigeons for the 

 public amusement. Branches were proposed to be established 

 in France, Ireland, Spain, Holland and Belgium ; four or five 

 falconers were engaged, and a large number of hawks of all 

 kinds ordered and procured. The scale of operations was so 

 large as to be unwieldy, and the method of carrying out the 

 scheme did not prove successful A certain amount of sport 

 was shown at rooks on the Epsom Downs under the manage- 



