20 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
have been confined a long time to the blocks. A week is enough for 
some birds between taking up from hack and flying to the lure, but 
others can hardly be got ready in so short a time. Three weeks is 
certainly far too long. 
When the birds—especially eyesses—are broken to the hood, they 
need only wear it for an hour or more a day (except, of course, when 
going to and from the field), unless, indeed, they are seen to bate 
much from some cause or other. I don’t say that they should miss 
a day in being hooded ; if they do so, they get to dislike the hood 
from too seldom wearing it; but, assuming no dislike, then let them 
sit barefaced. They soon get tame on a lawn by doing so, especially 
if there are children and dogs about—agents, however, to be em- 
ployed in moderation, as they must not tease or frighten the birds. 
Hooded birds, it is clear, might just as well be away from society. 
When a hawk, broken to the hood and made tame by carriage and 
the presence of people, is put on the wing for the first time, she 
must be decidedly sharp-set—i.e., she must have had only half a crop 
about twenty-five hours before. I don’t know how it is, but I have 
almost always found that good fresh beefsteak—which must be 
exceedingly nourishing—gives hawks which were fed on it yesterday 
an appetite to-day. I fancy it must give a tone to the stomach, and 
a sort of spurt to the bird’s constitution, Hot birds—i.e., birds just 
killed—though excellent, do not seem to me to leave such an appe- 
tite as beef does. I give both, and now and then rabbit, but the last 
not often, to hawks worked daily at grouse. It is cooling, and not 
unnatural food, as I have said before, and a nice change. 
Well; the hawk is on the wing to the lure. You have taken her, 
as far as you can, from the neighbourhood of trees or stone walls. 
Don’t keep her too long on the wing the first time, or perhaps she 
may sit on the ground: if not a dashing bird—if, in short, possibly 
a bad one—she may do so in any case. Supposing she does, walk 
up to her till she rises ; and on no account throw her the lure till she 
