NOTICES OP NEW BOOKS. 317 



hawk-bells, are still regularly made in the Punjab, with one or two trifling 

 variations. European pictures show the lure fitted with portions of a bird's 

 wing, which are absent from the Indian lure, and the falconer goes afield 

 with his hawks perched on a hoop slung round his body, while here, when 

 more than one are carried, they travel on a horizontal pole. Staying once 

 at the chief town of a native State, I wondered at the number of hawks 

 carried about, and concluded that when a man wanted an excuse for a stroll, 

 he went to the Raja's mews and got a hawk to take out for an airing on his 

 wrist. During a gathering of chiefs at Lahore, to meet Lord Dufferin and 

 the Duke of Connaught, Falcons and falconers came to swell the retinues 

 of the Rajas, and I observed the constables on duty at the museum in my 

 charge wanted to make the men leave their hawks outside when they 

 came to see that institution. A stuffed bird in a glass case might, of 

 course, tempt a hawk, but when hooded the creature is as well behaved as 

 a sleeping child. 



" The attendant circumstance of Indian falconry is not without its 

 charm, especially during the clear cold weather of the Punjab winter. I 

 remember riding to a hawking-party across a wide sandy plain, where 

 cultivation was scanty, a fresh wind blowing, and in the far distance the 

 snowy range of the Himalaya sparkled white against the intense blue. A 

 group of Elephants, with howdahs and trappings blazing in scarlet and gold, 

 furnished the vast wind-swept spaces with a touch of colour, and even the 

 blue and red patterns daubed on their gigantic foreheads looked delicate 

 and pretty. The strange heraldic monsters in beaten silver, with glass 

 eyes, that supported the howdahs, and the great red cloths splashed with 

 gold embroidery, would have been garish at close quarters ; but here they 

 suited perfectly with the cavalcade ot horsemen attired in scarlet and gold, 

 the leashed dogs straining and snarling, and the motley crowd of beaters, 

 chill in the morning sunshine. The hawks sharply turned their heads in 

 expectation, tugging and straining at their jesses like anchored ships in a 

 gale. But when all was over, the Bustards found and flown-at had escaped 

 without scathe, and one of the hawks was lost. As a man who has never 

 been able to find pleasure in the chase, and who never possessed a gun, I 

 iound no personal fault with this issue ; but when people set forth to do a 

 thing, they ought to do it well. Hawks must often be lost ; for a country- 

 side proverb about kangni, the small Indian millet, says that its cultivation 

 is ' as risky as keeping a hawk.' 



" I have heard of flights where the hawk does all that is set down for 

 him in the books, and I have watched the careful training of hawks to 

 come back to the lure, where they are rewarded with a bit of newly-killed 

 Crow, &c. ; but 1 strongly suspect the best of the business is the riding 

 and the company. Any one in the habit of looking at birds in India may 

 see free hawking enough,— the Shrike, which in a town garden brings 



