MOULTING 383 



game year after year, from August 12 up to about October 10, 

 and then put them down to moult, or rather to finish 

 moulting, and have taken them up at the end of February, 

 in time for the spring rook hawking, perfect in every feather : 

 this we consider to be the best method of managing passage 

 hawks, and the means by which the most work can be got 

 out of them. The last feather thrown is the first or outside 

 feather of the wing. Very great care is necessary to avoid 

 injury to these feathers as they come down, which they do very 

 slowly. Very quiet tame hawks will moult very well on the 

 block, but when they are put down to moult late in the season 

 or where they are of a wild, excitable nature the best plan is 

 to turn them into a warm loft or loose box, as large and as 

 light as possible ; the windows should be protected by r perpen- 

 dicular bars, to which the hawks cannot cling, and so break 

 their feathers, and all corners or inconvenient perching-places 

 should be rounded off or protected. Two or even three 

 hawks of the same sex * may be moulted in one loft in this 

 way. Their food should be securely tied to small boards, so 

 that it may not be dragged into corners, and should consist 

 as much as possible of birds, with their feathers on to form 

 castings, and of rough food such as rats, rabbits, fowls, or 

 pheasants' heads, and similar things the less butcher's meat 

 is used the better. A hawk should always be turned into the 

 mews with new, or, at any rate, very sound jesses on her in 

 order to avoid any struggle with her in replacing unsound ones 

 when she is first taken up, wild and full of flesh. 



According to the ancient writers, hawks appear to have 

 suffered from as many and as complex diseases as human 

 beings, and the pharmacopoeia employed was as extensive and 

 as filthy in the one case as in the other. In modern times our 

 practice is more simple, but it must be owned that some of the 

 diseases of our hawks baffle our skill. We propose, first, to 

 treat of such complaints as have been found curable, and 



1 Except goshawks, which can never be trusted near any other hawk of 

 their own 01 another kind. 



