18 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
bank might beat him. It isa manual affair only, of course perfected 
by practice. Still, good hooding is very valuable—clearly, at any 
rate, not at all to be despised, for you may harm a bird very much 
by clumsiness, if you give your mind to it. 
Perhaps it is difficult to write directions for hooding; I wish it 
could be seen. The allowing a bird to pull at meat through the 
hood—i.e., the hood being on—is a help in hooding and in taming ; 
but, as I have just said, it should be done sparingly, for this reason : a 
bird accustomed to pull through the hood may, when trained, bite 
your glove when she is hungry, and that is a most tiresome habit. 
My own practice, after 2 hawk has been taken from the bow-net, 
has been simply to hood, put on a block for a couple of hours, carry 
for an hour, keeping the hood loose, and replacing it before it has 
been quite removed. At night the hood is taken off altogether, as I 
have said. The hawk is taken from the block in the morning, 
carried for an hour, constantly hooded and unhooded, made to pull 
a little at a fowl’s leg through the hood, and for a few moments— 
for some time, if possible—after it has been quietly slipped off. 
She is then placed hooded on the block till you have a further 
opportunity of carrying her. No castings must be given, therefore 
the leg of the fowl must be stripped entirely of its feathers. If the 
fowl is old, the leg will be full of fat; cut that away. 
Don’t plague yourself with one hawk for more than two hours a 
day, unless she is very tiresome. Take her by degrees amongst 
company, having the hood ready to put on the moment she bates 
wildly off your glove. Continue this sort of thing, and in less than 
a week—sometimes in four days—the hawk will be well broken to 
the hood. You give no castings, because for two nights, when you 
are certain that her stomach is free from them, the bird should 
sleep hooded. This may seem a royal road to breaking to the hood ; 
but I think it will be found to answer with most hawks, unless the 
falconer is clurfsy, which I confess he may be from inexperience. 
