HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 59 
which had one rook’s nest, or, as it was some little distance from the 
rookery, it might have been a carrion crow’s nest, for my ornithology 
was not very general at that time. I spared the birds when they 
‘built, laid, and hatched, and they rewarded me by persecuting my 
merlins, then only just able to fly, and by pecking out the eye of a 
fine female bird. 
At that time I was merlin-mad, and would have given up a day’s 
pheasant shooting for one ringing flight at a lark. I did something 
with sparrowhawks, but not very much, for the others took my 
time. a 
Presently “‘ Falconry in the British Isles’? waa published, my 
Northumberland friend being one of the authors; the admirable 
lithographs being of his own execution, and taken from his own 
drawings. This book increased my zeal for falconry, and I very 
soon made a first essay with the peregrine. I began witha tiercol 
sent to me from Scotland, and, though he was not a good one, thanks 
no doubt in a measure to myself, I began to prefer this hawk to 
either of the other species I have named. In short, I was more 
enthusiastic than ever. It appeared to me a great injustice that 
birds, made, as I thought, for the use of man—as tke horse and 
dog are made—should be tortured in traps, killed at the eyrie, 
outlawed, treated as vermin; in short, hunted to death through- 
out the kingdom. I knew that they were bold, dashing, tractable, 
capable of some attachment, excellent in their beauty, surpassing 
all creatures in their swiftness; that they were, after all, the very 
princes of the air, the aristocracy of the things that fly. Moreover, 
I had called them out of the clouds to my feet; I had reared them, 
fed them, made them my servants and my friends. In themI had 
“ dominion over the fowls of the air.” And I remembered what they 
once were; how, in times as hearty as these, and more noble, they 
stood first of all amongst the instruments of the chase. 
I thought T would defend them. I almost smile now at my notion 
