The beak and nares of a hawk should be kept clean, and a good falconer will, after she has finished her meal, wipe off any remnants of food or blood which may remain attached to the upper mandible. Unless this is done--sometimes, indeed, in spite of its being done--the nostrils and upper parts of the cere, where the feathers begin, may become infested with acari, or mites, which, unless destroyed, will eat into the horn and the flesh and cause great annoyance, if not actual sores and inflamed ulcers. Hawks which are in low condition are particularly subject to this pest; but at all times a sharp look-out should be kept, so as to detect the presence of the minute parasites, which may be seen running about somewhere near the nostrils. Fortunately it is easy to get rid of them. A solution of tobacco soaked in water should be made, and mixed with brandy or some strong spirit, and then applied with a small brush to the parts visited by the parasites. After a few applications they will be found to have disappeared. Hawks will often get corns on their feet if allowed to stand constantly on hard blocks or perches. It is strange enough that there should be found any falconers who have so little thought for the comfort of their charges that they will use such resting-places. The screen-perch, at all events, which is kept permanently indoors, should have a padding of some kind--cloth, baize, or soft leather--underneath the canvas or sacking upon which the hawk has to stand. One of the cruellest of all the cruel things done in zoological gardens is the neglect to pad the miserable perches provided for the birds of prey, which are usually in consequence seen to have their feet adorned plentifully with corns and deformities. What with bad food, bad resting-places, and defective bathing accommodation, these poor captives are usually types of what the falconer should wish that his hawks may not become.