MOULTING 251 



wards fly as well as ever, and give a good account of a ringing 

 lark. When any such little mishap occurs the hawk must of 

 course be kept as high fed and fat as he can be consistently 

 with proper obedience. The jack I speak of found himself, in 

 consequence of his misfortune, promoted to a position of special 

 favour among his fellows. An extra allowance of the best sort 

 of food was daily permitted to him. When he flew well — which, 

 by the way, he always did — he had nearly as much as he liked 

 to eat. And when by reason of this very high feeding he 

 refused to come to the dead lure, a lark was generally walked 

 up by beaters driving towards him as he sat on a rick, so that 

 he might be indulged with the flight for which his vain little 

 soul was longing. Or, if this could not be done, he was left on 

 his self-chosen perch until one of the other hawks went up after 

 a ringing lark, when he would come up like a meteor across the 

 sky, and join in, sometimes to the great chagrin of the other 

 hawk, which had started under the impression that she was to 

 have the field to herself. In due course the new feathers grew 

 down, having the pretty blue-grey hue of the adult plumage, 

 and thus contrasting conspicuously with the five brown feathers 

 on either side of them. Before the lark season was over they 

 were fully down ; and my lord was quite a curiosity, looking 

 rather as if some waggish under-falconer had imped the two 

 middle feathers of his tail with a couple of wood-pigeon's feathers 

 instead of the proper ones. 



A hawk which has once been moulted in captivity is said 

 to be " intermewed." When the moulting hawk, which has been 

 mewed in the old-fashioned way to get through the process, is 

 " summed " with her new suit, the falconer must not suppose 

 that the troubles of the ordeal are over. Before the newly be- 

 dizened beauty can be flown again with any success she must 

 be got into condition, and, if suffered to get wild during her long 

 incarceration, she must undergo a fresh ordeal of reclamation. 

 The old falconers give elaborate directions for conditioning a 

 hawk when " drawn " from the mews. It would be more tedious 

 than profitable to reproduce their prescriptions, most of which 

 recommend nostrums too fanciful for this matter-of-fact age. 

 Almost as well might a modern trainer be advised to get his 

 man fit by means of the terrific potions and purges upon which 

 Caunt and Belcher were brought into condition. In these days 

 we are partly too timid, and partly, I suspect, also too lazy, to 

 compound together some score of ingredients, more or less 

 poisonous or distasteful, and administer the product to an 



