Eagles and all short-winged hawks should have a gorge, that is to say, as much as they choose to eat, about three times in a fortnight, and on the following day should be very sparingly fed. Eagles, indeed, and some female goshawks need not be fed at all, if they are to be flown at wild quarry on the second day after their full meal. But none of the smaller hawks will stand anything approaching to starvation; and to leave a male sparrow-hawk or merlin without food for twenty-four hours would probably do him a permanent injury, or at all events ruin his chance of doing himself any justice in the field for a long time to come. In the case of these, and indeed all the long-winged hawks, when in constant exercise at wild quarry, I am not quite sure that any good is done by giving any gorges at all. I never do so with merlins in the lark season; and yet I have killed with one of them over thirty larks in succession without a miss. Granting that in their wild state all hawks occasionally gorge themselves, it must be remembered that trained hawks are not in a wild state. The analogy is not a just or true one, any more than it would be to argue from the habits of Red Indians to those expedient for a white man in training. However, there can be no great harm, even if there is no great advantage, in giving a gorge to a peregrine once a week. It is a practice consecrated by old tradition and precept: and it is not for us degenerate modern amateurs to lightly discard the maxims of the age of chivalry.