244 
The Animal-Lore of ShaJcsjoeare’s Time. 
Sir Philip Sidney is reported to have said, “ Next to- 
hunting I like hawking worst,” and certainly there are 
few allusions to the latter sport to be met with in his 
poems. 
The Eev. R. Lubbock {Fauna of Norfolk, 1845, p. 12} 
draws attention to the way in which, in many instances., 
the very nature'of birds has been affected by the alteration 
in the manners and customs of man. This is more' 
especially the case in the larger birds of prey:— 
“ The forgotten sport of falconry has left behind it abundant record, 
of the immunity which in days of yore clung to every feathered thing: 
which called itself a hawk; not only were the generous kinds pro¬ 
tected, but kites and buzzards marauded in ^security, hiding their mis¬ 
deeds under the shadow of the nobler species. In those days might 
fairly be seen the nature of the bird as it really was, and that in many 
instances appears to have been to cling to man. The wild hawks, we 
are told in old treatises, often paused in their flight to observe the 
sportsman and his dogs, and gain for themselves some of the booty 
which had escaped the trained bird. But amongst ourselves, a hawk 
when seen has the air of a convicted felon; he skulks along, conscious 
that every man’s hand is against him; the nature of the bird is in 
some degree changed by the untoward circumstances in which he is 
placed.” 
One result of the indiscriminate slaughter of the hawk 
tribe in modern times has been, that diseased birds of the 
species pursued by hawks, which would otherwise have 
fallen easy victims in the struggle for existence, continue 
to exist, and so tend to deteriorate their kind. 
The passage in Hamlet, ii. 2, 396, “I am but mad north- 
north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk 
from a hernshaw,” noticed by Mr. Halting (p. 75), is still 
further elucidated by Mr. Aldis Wright. He points out 
that, as the morning used to be the favourite time for 
the sport of hawking, when the wind blew from the north¬ 
west the birds would probably fly so that any person 
watching them had the sun in his eyes, and could not 
easily distinguish the quarry from its pursuer, but that 
