little, it will throw you back terribly in your progress towards making her. It may lead to the abominable vice of habitual carrying, than which nothing is more annoying and more dangerous. If by mishap the hawk should bolt, hold on gently but firmly to the string, and give her still more time before again approaching her. The art of "making in" should be studied and practised from the first. You will afterwards be amply repaid for all your trouble. See the important remarks made on this subject in Chapter IX. When you have secured the quarry, keep down for at least two or three minutes more, and let the hawk begin feeding at her ease on it, or on the pigeon which you may have substituted. Help her to find the best pieces. You may talk to her in encouraging words, if such is your habit, while she is eating. Then slowly get up, lifting the food, and the hawk upon it, without any haste or jerking. Let her have nearly a full crop--the reward of good behaviour--and subject her to no chance of annoyance or interference all the rest of the day. These instructions may seem lengthy and needlessly minute. If they are, it is a fault on the right side. You are at a critical stage now in your pupil's education. You are "making" her to the business which is henceforth to be the business of her life; and a little extra precaution is justifiable in order to ensure that the lesson you are teaching shall be well learnt. As the hawk finds by experience that you approach her with no predatory intentions, but rather to help her and add to her enjoyment of her meal, she will gain confidence, and be less and less inclined to misbehave herself by bolting. And as her mistrust diminishes so will your trouble be lessened, until at last you will be able to make in without any of these precautions and delays. Whereas, if you are negligent or over-confident at first, you may end by not being able to make in to her at all, and may have the mortification of having been for some weeks the owner of a fine hawk which could fly admirably, but which, after one of her first few flights at wild quarry, literally "vanished into thin air."