PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 49 
If they have been out some time they may require the bow-net; but 
hawks differ in this respect, some letting you take them up easily 
after a fortnight’s absence, some getting comparatively wild by that 
time—at least wild for the moment; after a day or two on the block 
they will be found as tame as ever. 
In speaking of the use of live pigeons, I desire to avoid recom- 
mending the practice of cruelty. I always use the dead lure when 
I can; and the life’of a pigeon in a falcon’s foot is generally so short, 
that the death can hardly be more painful than that which comes, 
in the ordinary course, from age or accident. As for chickens, 
they must be given very sparingly, and, if possible, not given at 
all, for there is such a thing as involuntarily entering a falcon to 
the fowls of a farmyard. I hate a hen-killing bird. 
My task is now quite finished. I hopeI have. done my duty to 
my readers; for, if ever there was a man utterly sick of writing the 
rudiments, tired to death of teaching the 4, 4, rd of falconry, I am 
that man. And yet I so dearly love the sport, that if I find I have 
helped anyone to understand it, and to practise it with pleasure, I 
shall forget the torture in remembering the cause. 
