HOW I BECAME A FALCONER, 71 
ask so much sympathy for my own notions, should be inconsistent 
if I ignored it. To me the great charm of sport rests in anticipation, 
in uncertainty, in some labour, in the necessity of expedients, in the 
employment of animals trained to the chase; and I protest against 
the loading and firing as fast as you can taking a high place in 
sport ; but I won’t deny that I like the opportunity of doing so once 
or twice in the year. While hawking was with me a positive 
passion, I should not have admitted this: indeed, I did not feel 
it. But, strong as my opinions remain as to what ought to be, 
Iam occasionally dazzled with what is. 
I rather wanted an opportunity of being understood in this matter, 
for I should shrink from being set down as a coxcomb who thinks 
that all the world is wrong, and that he and his few friends are 
alone right. I shall go on with my subject much more agreeably to 
myself, now that I can seem to offer my experience of a sport which 
is certainly not at all remunerative as far as the bag is concerned, 
simply for what that sport is worth. 
If a concentrated excitement is one of the elements of sport, a 
flight after important quarry has one of those elements in perfection. 
And there is an old stager now sitting under the shed not far from 
the room in which I am writing, who has given me and others 
excitement enough in all conscience.* This is Islay, a three- 
year-old falcon, and therefore waiting for her fourth grouse 
season: her fourth, that is, in point of time: in point of fly- 
ing she has only passed through two—last year having been what 
all know it was. Not a gun was fired nor a hawk flown on these 
moors. f 
In the year 1865, I rather thought matters were coming to an end 
with me; I had an attack of pleurisy, or some pleuritic affection, in 
the summer. One hawk, and one only, a falcon, was flying at hack ; 
* This hawk is lost. + The year of the grouse-disease, 1867, 
