252 THE MERLIN. 
placed within the aperture, so as to encourage the bird to tear away the 
flesh in order to satiate its hunger. The next step is to substitute an entire 
partridge for the ordinary diet, and by degrees to teach it to pounce upon 
the dead bird as it is flung to a daily increasing distance, It is a good 
MERLIN. —(A/ypotriorchis @salon.) 
pigeon-hunter, and if the owner choose to train it for smaller game, it is 
unrivalled as a chaser of thrushes, larks, and similar birds, owing to the 
pertinacity with which it carries on the pursuit, and the resolutely agile 
manner with which it will thread the mazes of branch and leaf in chase of a 
bird which seeks for refuge in the covert, 
