4 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
It will be found that I shall answer all these questions in this 
little treatise, and most of them in this chapter. 
In bad weather and during winter nights hawks should be under 
cover. Fastened to blocks as they are, they have no means of 
getting their blood warm by exercise, and weather which would 
not injure them at all when at liberty might destroy them in con- 
finement. A shed is the best, and usual arrangement. It 
is easily made where there is a long wall to serve as a back; 
and it is proper that it should face the morning sun. A line of 
thick, low. shrubs, planted in front, will in some degree keep off 
the wind. The ground under the shed should be six inches deep in 
sand, and good straw must be placed round each block, but not 
touching it, so as to protect the bird’s wings when she bates. Every 
peregrine must have a space of eight feet square—mine have even 
more—thus the shed undoubtedly takes up a great deal of room ; but 
an unused loft will do. Straw is necessary on boards as well as on 
sand; and sand must be placed on boards immediately round the 
blocks. Hawks may be kept in pitch darkness on a horizontal pole, 
and in this way they are often placed very near together ; but I should 
never think of adopting the plan myself, except in a case of emer- 
gency. In fine weather they are put out on the lawn. 
Peregrines and merlins are generally kept on blocks; goshawks 
and sparrowhawks on bow-perches. 
The peregrine’s block is a piece of wood the shape of a sugarloaf, 
with the top cut off. It is about twelve or fourteen inches in 
height, and has a spike at the base, which keeps it firm in the 
ground—a most important matter when blocks are placed near each 
other on a lawn, or when they are under the shed, because the birds 
would make sad work with their neighbours, if their legs got fastened 
to each other’s leashes ; and they would injure their plumage if they 
could drag a block from its place in the shed, and so bring them- 
selves too near the walls. The points of their wings when they 
