Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/101

Rh adrift (after forty-five years' service under the St. Albans family) on a beggarly pension of £50 a-year! Why do not some of our Parliamentary Reformers take measures either to induce the Grand Falconer to give some value to the nation for the £1000 a-year paid to him, or to reduce the amount?

This questionable action almost proved a death-blow to modern Falconry; for from that time to the formation of "The Falconry Club," which has just been started, at the suggestion, and by the exertions, of the Editor of this Magazine (to whom I gave for that purpose the use of my entire establishment of falconers and hawks), there has been in existence no central depot to which the amateur could have recourse for instruction, for assistance in procuring hawks, or for the temporary care of them. Thus it was impossible for a beginner to take up Falconry as an occasional pursuit and in moderation. Having to provide all his own resources, he had either to let it alone, or to go into it as a regular business taking up the whole of his time—an undertaking for which few are inclined.

I am not ignoring the fact that Falconry has never ceased to be carried on during the past ten years. The Rev. Gage Earle Freeman ("Peregrine" of The Field'), the apostle of modern Falconry, has from time to time rendered invaluable service to the cause, and attracted public attention to it by charming articles and letters on Falconry penned in his own most characteristic and genial style, to say nothing of his separately published and important works on the subject. My late friend Mr. Ewen, of Ewenfield (Ayrshire), used to kill some three hundred grouse every year with falcons. Another friend, Major Hawkins Fisher, of Stroud Castle, has constantly done good work at Partridges and Rooks; and, that select few, the "Old Hawking Club," with their clever falconer, John Frost, have been most successful in flying at Rooks and other quarry on Salisbury Plain. Last spring I believe they killed about one hundred and eighty Rooks; and a Goshawk belonging to them took some hundred and fifty rabbits in the course of two or three months in the summer. But all of these, including the "Old Hawking Club,"—the number of members of which are strictly limited,—have been purely private establishments, of which it has been impossible for an outsider to make any use whatever.

I myself even have been compelled before now to let a season