Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 097.djvu/312

298 The death of the gazelle is now considered the highest triumph of Eastern falconry:

We doubt much, however, if the reader will peruse this account of the death of the antelope without a pang. Mr. Burton says, "There is an eternal sameness in the operation of shooting, which must make it—one would suppose—very uninteresting to any but those endowed with an undue development of destructiveness." And Colonel Bonham, of the 10th Hussars, we are told by Mr. Knox, has laid aside the gun and the rifle for the enjoyment of the "noble craft;" but the gun has at least the advantage of putting a bird, generally speaking, out of misery at once. ^Who can read the following conclusion of a combat between a Khairu, a hobby-hawk, and a crow, without feeling for the victims of the sport?