Hack hawks, when taken up, should be as round as balls and as bumptious as undergraduates. They know not what it is to be really sharp-set; and unless dosed they make quite a favour of eating at all during the first two or three days of real captivity. Continue feeding them at the rate they have been accustomed to, and you will lose patience before you can bring them under any sort of control. In fact, you will not do so at all. Yet I do not mean that they should be made thin. There is, it is true, no longer any fear of hunger-traces, but a thin hawk is a weak hawk, and sometimes even a spoilt hawk. Her small feathers lose their gloss; her flight feathers grow weak and brittle, and are ready to break on slight provocation; her nares lose colour, and begin to harbour mites. In short, a thin hawk is an abomination and a disgrace. She must therefore not be either overfed or underfed, but just made hungry enough before each meal-time to be really keen after her food. And as she has accumulated during her probationary time of adolescence more or less internal fat, the quickest and easiest way to get rid of it is to give her a mild dose or two of purgative medicine, and some rangle, as recommended in the chapter on ailments. Hack hawks and all other eyesses must be taught to jump and fly to the fist. If long-winged, they must be made to the lure. And in all cases they should be thoroughly broken to the hood. Thus we have arrived at the same stage with our eyesses and with our wild-caught hawks; and the subsequent stages are very nearly the same with each. Carrying (on the fist--I do not mean the vice of that ilk) is still a _sine quâ non_. No hawk can have too much of it. I have read in some hawking books a reference to hawks being "too tame." The phrase, as applied to a trained hawk, is not very well chosen, and might mislead a beginner. Some of the most deadly hawks ever flown have been as "tame as parrots." When a very tame hawk flies badly it is not, as a rule, because she is too tame, but because she is too fat, or, more likely still, because she is not properly sharp-set at the moment of flying. Some remarks on the conditioning of hawks will be found later on. In the meantime let not the beginner be afraid of getting his hawk too fond of him. She should "rejoyce in him," as the old falconers expressed it, and at sight of him be all excitement to come to him, not only for food, but for the chance of a flight, which she will soon begin to think that he alone can procure for her. Even wild hawks will sometimes wait on upon their known enemy, man, on the chance of his putting up game, and so "serving them," as the saying is. How much more should a trained hawk do, who is beginning to know that the falconer is a good friend?