To passage hawks, especially haggards, this finessing is the A B C of scientific flying. Moreover, an experienced hawk does not always choose to stoop exactly up-wind, but prefers, for some reason of her own, to come at her victim sideways. There are mysterious laws and principles of aërial steering, which no man understands, but which sometimes make a stoop more telling when made in a direction unexpected by the riders down below. Eyesses are generally some time before they learn the art of utilising the wind to increase the force of their stoop, and of using their heads to help their wings. Some, it is true, seem to be born good tacticians, or at least to have instinctively learnt to be so while flying at hack. But these are quite the exceptions. Not only do eyesses as a rule begin with an inferior style, but very few of them ever attain to the perfection of form which long practice in all weathers at all sorts of different quarry has taught the old wild hawk. As the two birds mount, the hawk naturally gains on the rook. She is the quicker flier; sometimes, perhaps, by a hundred per cent., but generally much less than this. Going down-wind there is not so much difference between them, when both are at the same height. But the start at a rook should always be up-wind. To throw off at a down-wind rook is bad falconry. When a rook means to "keep the air," or beat the hawk in fair flying, he will, after a while, begin to ring, that is, to ascend spirally in circles. Why he should do this, instead of continuing in a straight line, no one, I think, has properly explained. But the road upwards for most birds when they are exerting themselves--be they kites, herons, rooks, or larks--is in spiral circles more or less regular, a very obliging dispensation of nature for those who want to look on at a high flight! For while the ringing lasts the horsemen down below need not hurry themselves. Only, if there is anything of a wind they should always keep moving, so as to be well to leeward of the flight, shifting their ground to right or left according as the circles seem to tend in one or the other direction. The higher the quarry goes the faster and farther will be the headlong dash down-wind if he is beaten in the air. After a while, if the hawk perseveres, her superior flying powers will take her above the quarry. At what time and height this desirable result is brought about depends, of course, partly upon the speed of the one bird and partly on the speed of the other. There is a saying among falconers that a good hawk makes a bad quarry, meaning that a rook or other bird which might give a fine flight when only a moderate hawk was behind him very often makes quite a poor show against a first-rate performer. It may also be said with some truth that a good quarry makes a bad hawk, inasmuch as hawks which have flown many a good flight and killed many a fairly fast-flying rook may sometimes find themselves pitted against such