Recreations of a Naturalist 



IN PRAISE OF HAWKING 



There is an old-world sound in the word " Hawk- 

 ing" which carries one back to the days when 

 every treatise on English field sports, from the 

 Book of St Albans onwards, contained a chapter on 

 the art of falconry, and every man according to his 

 social rank had a particular kind of hawk assigned 

 to him. The humbler the falconer the more ig- 

 noble was the bird he carried ; the most valuable 

 species, often imported at great cost from abroad, 

 being reserved for princes and noblemen, as befitted 

 their position. 



To the former class belonged the Kestrel and 

 Sparrow Hawk, to the latter the Falcon gentle, the 

 Goshawk, and the Jerfalcon. So thoroughly smitten 

 were our early kings with the love of hawking as a 

 recreation that stringent laws were passed to pro- 

 tect the eyries, or nests, and fine or imprisonment 

 awaited those who ventured to steal another man's 

 hawk and refused to restore it to its rightful 

 owner.^ Henry VIII., by an Act passed in the 

 thirty-first year of his reign, made it a felony to 



1 II Hen. VII. cap. 17, repealed by i & 2 Will. IV. 

 cap. 32. 



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