HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 63 
sarily in gentlemanlike courtesy, to permit it for a moment. And, 
therefore, I think, as a rule, that the man who has not game of his 
own, had better have nothing to do with the peregrine. 
I never flew the artificial hawk when shooting, to make the birds 
lie. They tell me that it drives, at any rate, partridges from the 
ground. Idon’tknow. I don’t deny it; I simply don’t know. I 
don’t deny it, because I can’t refuse to receive what any gentleman, 
or any honest keeper or labourer, tells me on his word ; I don’t know 
it, as I have seen nothing of the sort, and as those who assert it 
may possibly be mistaken. But there is something else—I really 
don’t care about it; and I don’t care about it because I have flown 
the peregrine falcon pretty often at game—industriously for nearly 
a dozen years—and (by some sort of accident, I suppose, for I am 
not such an idiot as to claim anything else) I have found the land on 
which I have hawked rather specially full of game than otherwise, 
and this both in a particular part of a particular manor, and in 
many different counties in England. There is nothing in this; I 
claim nothing—probably my fancy has run away with me; but to 
the following belief Iam ready solemnly to setmy hand. Itisthis: 
That if at one time a couple of men were to pass over a2 moor 
shooting, and at another time a couple of men were to pass over 
the same moor hawking, there would not be the smallest difference 
in the frights which the game had received, as far as its leaving the 
land is concerned. The birds are there the day after hawking, just 
as they are the day after shooting ; the only difference is that they 
lie better after the former than after the latter sport. 
And yet game is driven from the ground by the artificial hawk ! 
Perhaps so. The onus is hardly with me, one way or another. But 
if the fact is certain, as it may be, I can only suggest, what indeed I 
saw suggested some years ago, that the buzzard or the hen harrier 
—snatching prey from the ground or close to it as they do, rather 
than chasing—may cause some birds to get up in the distance, and 
