222 FALCONRY. 



with cobbler's wax in the quill ; and no doubt a very neat job could be made 

 thus in the plumage of the living bird. In a skin the process is more 

 difficult ; for in this, which Professor Owen calls " the most exquisite and 

 complex of all tegumentary coverings, common to the Kiwi and the Ostrich 

 with the Eagle and the Swift " (' Monograph on British Fossil ReptiUa,' 

 part ii. p. 89, Palasont. Soc), after a life-long manipulation of skins, the most 

 experienced birdstuffer cannot replace a feather when once it has been 

 pulled out ; nor if he cuts out a bit of skin, say with twenty feathers on it, 

 can he put that back again so as to make them fit into their places. What 

 he is obliged to do is to pare the skin down and replace perhaps ten or 

 fifteen. No doubt many a taxidermist will say " I have done this," — but not 

 so that an experienced eye failed to detect the factitious portion. In this, 

 man cannot imitate nature. 



The decay of Falconry, produced by the perfection of firearms, brought 

 with it the loss of various members of our ornis. When men killed Bustards, 

 for instance, six or seven at a shot, and knocked over flying birds with very 

 little failure at every discharge, there was an end to many fine forms. 

 England became a rapid spender of species ; and little but regret remains. 



That this was the case respecting Bustards is a fact ; we have only to 

 read Mr. Stevenson's ' Birds of Norfolk,' vol. ii. p. 24 : — " Mr. Lubbock, 

 referring to the wholesale slaughter committed by that notorious otidicide, 

 George Turner, of Wretham, states .... that he succeeded in killing seven 

 at one discharge." It appears, however, by the subsequent account, that 

 Mr. E. Abbott really shot these Bustards. 



Again, in the ' History of Lynn,' by William Richards (vol. i. p. 196, 

 note), we have : — " The late Mr. Carr, a merchant of Lynn, used to say that 

 his father once killed six Bustards at one shot. They were probably then 

 much more numerous than now (1818). A respectable gentleman of Lynn, 

 however, assures the writer that not many years ago he saw no less than 

 eight or ten of them together in the neighbourhood of Stanhoe." All this 

 was the result of powder's rise and falconry's fall. 



