128 
■HAWKING. 
They might he easily distinguished hy the thousands who 
walked below, flying in and out, or circling round the sum- 
mit of the spire, notwithstanding the constant motion and 
creaking noise of the weather- cock, as it turned round at 
every change of wind. 
In consequence of the disappearance of wastes and com- 
mons, hy enclosures and hedges, which rendered it no easy 
matter to follow the amusement without danger and delay, 
and also, ever since the introduction of guns, hawking has 
gradually declined, and may he now said to he nearly at an 
end; though within late years, some attempts have been 
made to revive it. 
The following account is from an eye-witness of a day’s 
hawking, which occurred in June, 1825, in Norfolk, in the 
flat fen- country, near a heronry. The party assembled in 
the afternoon, the wind blowing towards the heronry. 
There were four couple of Hawks, all females, of the breed 
known hy the name of the Peregrine Falcon, one of the 
most esteemed of the British Hawks in the ancient days 
of falconry. They were carried hy a man to the ground, 
upon an oblong kind of frame, padded with leather, on 
which the birds perched, and to which they were fastened 
hy a thong of leather. Each bird had a small hell on one 
leg, and a leather hood, with an oblong piece of scarlet 
cloth stitched into it over each eye ; on the top of this hood 
was a small plume of various -coloured feathers. The man 
walked in the centre of the frame, with a strap from each 
side, over each shoulder ; and when he arrived at the spot 
fixed upon for the sport, he set down the frame upon its 
legs, and took off all the Falcons and tethered them to the 
ground in a convenient shady place. 
There were four foreigners, probably from Falconsward, 
a village in North Brabant, much famed for its Falcons, 
under whose particular care the birds were placed, each 
having a hag, somewhat like a woman’s pocket, tied to his 
waist, containing a live Pigeon, called a lure, to which was 
fastened a long string. 
After waiting awhile, some Herons passed, hut at too 
