235 



CHAPTER 1 



INTRODUCTORY — THE MODERN FALCONER — IMPLEMENTS 

 USED — GLOSSARY OF TERMS 



A WORK upon falconry, the most ancient of all the field sports 

 which men follow at the present day, needs no apology for its 

 introduction to the public, especially when, as is the case with 

 the following chapters, it forms part of the series of volumes 

 which deal comprehensively with all our English sports. That 

 falconry is not better known or more commonly practised 

 is due to the great alteration in the character of the country 

 since the days when it was the pursuit chiefest in the estima- 

 '' tion of the sporting public. The altnost universal enclosure 

 of the land, accompanied in many cases by the planting of 

 hedgerow timber, the introduction of the art of shooting 

 flying, which at once suppla:nted hawking as a means of 

 providing game for the table, the adoption of the system of 

 forming plantations which came so much into vogue about one 

 hundred and fifty years ago — all these things contributed to 

 make falconry less possible and therefore less popular than it 

 had been up to the time of the Commonwealth, when men's 

 minds were occupied with greater concerns than those of 

 sport, and when falconry, the chief amusement of the upper 

 classes, received its rudest shock. So now in the present day 

 the parts of the country where hawking can be successfully 

 carried on are comparatively few and far between, and though 

 there are a goodly band of devotees to the sport (and there is 

 no pursuit with the love of which its votaries become more 

 deeply imbued), yet it is not possible for them to respond to 



