240 FALCONRY 



matters. Clever as our ancestors were in the training of hawks, 

 much as we have learnt by following closely in their footsteps, 

 yet, as we live faster ourselves in these days, so we expect 

 more to be got out of our hawks than would have contented 

 the falconers of an hundred years d.go. At that period the 

 training of falcons was entrusted either to a man well taught 

 in the practice of the Scottish school, and, therefore, well 

 versed (and probably very clever) at hacking and training 

 hawks taken from the nest ; but the mysteries of catching and 

 taming the wild-bred hawks were a sealed book to a man of 

 this stamp, and the higher forms of falconry to be followed by 

 the aid of hawks of this class were unknown to his employers. 

 Or, again, where the master of the hawks was of more ambi- 

 tious temperament, a Dutch falconer was imported, whose 

 patience, skill, and delicate handling of the ' passage ' or wild- 

 caught peregrine were incomparably superior to the arts of 

 the rougher professional, who was only familiar with the easily 

 tamed, because never wild, nestling. But such a man as this 

 was, as a rule, entirely ignorant of game or of game hawking, 

 and, good as might be the sport which he showed, a great 

 deal of the fun which, on an English manor, can be got out 

 of a team of hawks, was lost to his followers. 



The falconer of the present day is a different personage 

 altogether. Met, perhaps, in the spring on the breezy downs, 

 with a first-rate team of wild-caught hawks, where he is show- 

 ing sport every day — ay ! and all day — to a large party at rooks, 

 magpies, &c., you next encounter him on the platform at 

 Perth on his way north to fly grouse with a combined team of 

 eyesses and passage hawks which he has educated on totally 

 different principles for a totally different flight. Some, per- 

 chance, are the very same rook hawks as were flown in the 

 spring, but so altered in education and habit as hardly to seem 

 the same birds. Next he will be seen' at Holyhead, returning 

 from a successful trip to Ireland, where he has been pursuing 

 the flight of the magpie, just in time to cross over to Holland 

 to help the Dutchmen in capturing the hawks for the following 



