HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 61 
CHAPTER II. 
SPORT—HAWES FRIGHTENING GAME FROM THE LAND— 
PERMISSION TO FLY AT GROUSE—BLACK CLOUD. 
Icawn quite understand those persons who say that falconry is a 
mere pastime up to a certain point; thongh I don’t quite believe 
them. To me it was sport to seea cast of merlins fly right up into 
the sky after a lark; even to see a pigeon taken by a merlin when 
the flight was good. ButI confess that Ihave modified many of my 
opinions in the matter of falconry. For instance, I have in a mea- 
sure changed my notions with respect to the love of the peregrine 
for grouse. That a hawk, I believe now, bred on a grouse moor, takes 
to this quarry naturally, and with delight; and what I retain is— 
and what I shall ever retain is only—that she, on the whole, isa 
grand institution of nature; and this, looking at the matter 
entirely from a shooter’s point of view, because she strikes out 
disease, stamps it out, when first it shows its hideous head upon 
the moors. 
But if I can now understand those persons who look on faleonry, 
up to a certain point, only as a pastime, my notions being on this 
head somewhat changed—if I can see that the killing of larks and 
blackbirds is an occupation which possibly can hardly claim for 
itself the distinguished term of “sport,” be it done this way or 
that—I still hold, and ask every true sportsman to hold with me, 
this truth, viz., that when game (or a large bird such as a heron) is 
killed in the chase, by creatures tutored by man to pursue it, there 
as * sport.” 
I look back to my merlin days, much as I like to look back on 
them, a little as upon one’s schoolboy days. Merlin-flying is 
