PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 37 
like the report of a gun, and I have generally found powder 
answer. 
To keep hawks to rooks—and I learn this from my friends who 
use passage-hawks; I have not done it in my own practice—it is some- 
times necessary to give them washed meat; meat, in fact, soaked 
for many hours in water, till it looks white and sodden. This is the 
“unbloody ” crop; the “ bloody” crop, for which the wretched birds 
must long, is only to come from the rook itself. The yellow goes 
from «a hawk’s legs and feet, and some of the gloss from her 
feathers, under this regimen ; and, indeed, the falconers will say, 
“This bird is not fit for rooks—her feet are yellow.” The yellow 
and the gloss are signs of health ; but it can’t be helped, I suppose. 
T never went into this kind of thing myself, and have been contented 
with high-fed falcons (one taken out of several), that flew rooks 
because they liked it. 
Just to guard against any mistake, let me say that the yellow 
does not appear on the cere (the wax-like formation above the 
upper mandible), nor perhaps to its full extent on the legs and feet, 
in very young eyesses. 
I had one falcon that really liked the flesh of rooks, but this is 
uncommon; and it is a good plan, after the bird has broken into the 
breast, to give a piece of nice beefsteak or a fowl’s leg under the 
rook’s wing. Once, when the falcon I have alluded to was eating a 
rook’s breast, I saw a shot deep in it, which I of course took out. 
The rook was in health and fat. I also once found a shot in a most 
healthy hawked grouse while I myself was eating it. Supposing I 
had given this bird to a friend as a hawked grouse, and he had 
found the shot, what would he have said of me? 
Magpie-hawking is a sport so well established among falconers 
that I must not omit it. Tiercels are the birds for this cunning, 
shifting quarry, as they can turn in w smaller space than a falcon 
can, and are what may be vailed “handy.” Hyessesare by far the 
