PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 13 
be kept tolerably tame for some weeks, and may even be taken up 
on the lures without the use of a net. But to ensure this you must 
stand close to them every time they are fed, and it is well to give 
them a juicy bit of meat from the hand now and then as they are 
feeding. Hawks in our second or third case almost always require 
the net, though you may approach some of them within a few yards. 
The wildest, however, will make very considerable tact necessary. 
A long string must be used, put perhaps through a stone wall, or 
some other fence, so that they can’t get even a glimpse of you as 
you pull. 
Before describing the bow-net, with which hack hawks are taken 
up, I must give a hint as to the care required in letting out hawks 
in our second case. They should be induced to come out, when 
decidedly hungry, to lures just out of the place in which they have 
been kept; there let them gorge themselves, taking care, as I said 
above, not to alarm them while they are leaving the neighbourhood 
of the outhouse for the first time. They should fly quietly off to 
short distances, and even then it may be necessary to look them up 
at feeding time, and perhaps go to them for the first day. 
The bow-net is this: a net fastened to two semicircles of iron bar 
(five-sixteenths in size), which are joined together at their ends by 
simple hinges—mere loops, in fact. When the whole is open, it 
should measure full three feet from hinge to hinge, and four 
feet and a half across the other way. To set it, peg down one 
half; throw back the other half over it, tucking the net in close and 
neatly. Fasten along and strong string to the iron of the move- 
able half, but not quite in the middle. Draw an imaginary line from 
one hinge to the other ; and just within that line, and a little nearer to 
the side on which the string is not fastened, place a hooked peg firmly 
in the ground. To this a pigeon is made secure with very short 
jesses ; or perhaps the lure, well furnished with meat, in one place 
only, is made quite immovable. Take alight peg, and, putting it 
