THE PEREGRINE FALCON.

ENGRAVED BY H. BECKWITH, FROM A PAINTING BY T. WILLIAMS.

The Peregrine Falcon of the naturalist, and the slight falcon of the sportsman, is in every way one of the most noted of the hawk tribe. In the opinion of Mr. St. John, the celebrated naturalist, the former title is the more expressive, as the bird is to be found in all countries. From the same eminent authority we learn that few vary so much in size, though this we imagine depends greatly on the climate, as well as on the manner in which they are reared. In the British isles the peregrine ranks amongst the first of falcons for all those qualities which are valuable to the sportsman. For size, courage, and beauty, as also for tractability of temper and certainty in pursuit of its quarry, we have none more noble; while its power and prowess come in good support to the confidence with which it makes an attack. It must be a strong bird indeed that can withstand the rapid powerful swoop and fierce blow of the peregrine, who will strike the head off a grouse or a pigeon with one blow, dividing the neck as completely as if it had been cut off with a sharp knife.

As well as differing so much in size, the peregrine alters greatly in appearance, in fact so much so from moulting, age, sex, and other causes, as to have been classed by our early naturalists under many separate heads or degrees. The farther research, however, and careful observation of more recent authorities, have cleared up these always unsatisfactory divisions, and left to us the peregrine as a falcon that from its carriage and peculiarly gallant bearing altogether, may be duly if not easily recognised under all the many disguises we have referred to.

When once civilized, or rather indeed when once caught, no bird takes readier to, or becomes a firmer ally of the sportsman-the difficulty is the procuring them, especially when you have to depend on "the woods and forests" alone for your supply. Well-seasoned bait and artfully contrived traps are of little avail here, for with the fine taste and spirit of the sportsman the peregrine will eat no game but what he himself can kill. Grouse, plover, and wild-fowl are his favourite food, though he has been known to descend to rabbits and rats-still but once slain, and in the strictest etiquette of barbarian warfare it becomes a bounden duty to sup of the vanquished, whatever his state or attractions may be. Mr. St. John gives us an amusing instance of this in a tame peregrine of his own, that lived for some years in the most intimate and friendly terms with an owl. Unfortunately, however, they quarrelled one day at dinner-with a single blow the bird of Minerva was prostrate, leaving nothing to tell of his untimely end but a few feathers and an indigestible pair of drum-sticks.

OTTER HUNTING.

BY GELERT.

(Continued.)

"Ye Naiads fair, who o'er these floods preside,
Raise up your dripping heads above the wave,
And hear our melody. Th' harmonious notes
Float with the stream; and every winding creek
And hollow rock, that o'er the dimpling flood
Nods pendant, still improves from shore to shore
Our sweet reiterated joys."

By the time the present article appears before the public, the noble sport of otter-hunting will have been consigned to hybernisation, and for seven or eight months the voice of melody will be silent on the waters. The craftsman, however, will not forget the days of delight which he has passed on the banks of many a bright stream during his short and sunny season; nor will he fail to recur, ever and anon, to those mysterious and unaccountable disappearances of the wild animal, by which his skill has been baffled and the instinct of his hounds set at nought. He remembers, perhaps, on one occasion to have found an otter in a river abounding with shallows and small pools, in the depths of which a minnow could scarcely escape observation, and the hovers of which could not even harbour a rat; his sport is undeniable, and he deems his prey as secure as though it were already elevated to his saddle-bow; yet, mirabile dictu, the otter suddenly disappears, and is not again viewed by mortal eyes. The hounds are as much puzzled as their master: in vain they cast up stream and down stream, in vain they try each bank and root; not a vestige remains of the animal; he is gone from their gaze as effectually as if he had vanished into thin air, or been dissolved in the element which has now favoured his escape. This is no imaginary mode of losing otters: there is scarcely a season in which the otter-hunter has not to lament many such losses; but it is passing strange that he cannot account for his failure, that some reason cannot be given why there should be so total a suspension of scent, and so sudden and subtle a disappearance of the animal in shallow clear water, and under circumstances such as we have described. Otters which thus escape are even

"Like the snow-falls in the river,

A moment seen, then gone for ever;

Or like the borealis race,

That flit ere you can point their place."

We remember to have found an old bitch otter and a young one about three-parts grown, in a small, beautiful brook, which emptied itself into the Salcombe estuary: they were both lying together in a hollow bank, under the roots of an old alder tree, the boughs of which darkening the

stream appeared to invite the timid trout to seek shelter under its shade. As we had some trouble in making them bolt, we sent for a pickaxe and opened the hole exactly over their retreat; when, to our astonishment, we found not only a brace of otters, but a fine young goose, which a farmer Langworthy had lost on the previous night, and which of course was "placed to the credit" of that arch-felon, the fox. We had halfan-hour's capital sport at the young otter, and killed. We then hit off the old one, and fresh-found her about a mile up stream: we worked her for twenty minutes incessantly, the terriers having closed more than once as she passed with bare back over the shallows. At last, when surrounded with hounds, with a man in the water above and below, she was suddenly lost, and from that moment we never could recover her. This happened about ten o'clock in the morning, and we did not leave the stream before six in the evening, when hounds and men having had enough, we were fain to confess ourselves beaten. She was picked up on the following day, however, about two miles below the spot where we had lost her, dead; the effect, probably, of the rough usage of the

terriers.

On another occasion, Mr. Trelawny's hounds found an otter under Yeo Wood, on the river Avon: there was scarcely water enough at the time in that part of the river to give the animal a fair chance, so Mr. Trelawny ordered his huntsman to take the hounds away, to bolt the otter with a single terrier, (the ancient Prince performed the office quickly,) and to give the wild animal a quarter of an hour's law, in which time it was thought he would reach a long weir-pool, and into which it was desirable to get him. Accordingly in went the Black Prince and out shoaled the otter, a perfect monster for size; his head was put up stream, and ere the hounds were clapped on he had reached the weir-pool in safety.

Never shall we forget the burst of music that rent the air-the thousand echoes that answered each other in harmonious confusion, as the pack dashed into the water and carried the scent in a head-foremost fashion, for nothing else could be seen of them, into the weir-pool above. "Steady, my boys, now; you've got some heavy work before you, and a Trojan that wont yield without a hearty fight for it ;" so said the squire, and he never said a truer thing. For four hours they worked that otter from one end of the weir-pond to the other, without intermission. Wanderer, Justice, Neptune, if he put his head into a hover, marked him at once. In mid-stream were Waterman, Westbury, Waspish, and Pillager plunging after him, and enjoying the bubble-scent as it rose to the surface with all the ardour of fox-hounds. In good sooth it was a gallant sight, and such as the hunter or warrior alone could witness and appreciate. A capital man, called Short, stood upon the weir, over which the stream was trickling with summer gentleness: above the pool, on a long piece of shallow and pellucent water, stood the huntsman, his eye resembling a cormorant's, and his attitude that of an ancient rivergod, whose business it was to watch over the streams. Suddenly and mysteriously the cry ceased; the hounds threw up their noses, and from that moment were never able to come to another mark. A frog could scarcely have concealed himself in the hovers; there was no brushwood in which the otter could have landed and so escaped unseen, and if there had been the hounds would have hit him off like a set of demons glued

to him; there were no drains of any description, the land not requiring them. Short vowed, and the huntsman protested that it was quite impossible the otter could have passed them without being gazed; and their statements were confirmed by the hounds, which were carefully cast up stream and down stream over and over again, but without success: they never spoke to it again, and were finally called off, apparently as much bewildered as their masters by the unaccountable loss of their prey. Many a sleepless hour we have passed upon our pillow, revolving in our mind the facts of that day, doubting, wondering, and perplexed as to the course of that otter, and endeavouring to frame some probable solu tion of his escape, but always finding it impracticable.

The female is a much shyer animal than the male otter, and much more difficult to kill. Sellick, a well-known otter-hunter in the west, used to say that, "if there was a cockle upon the water, a bitch otter would beat the best hounds that ever were littered." Whether the scent of the one is stronger than that of the other we cannot pretend to judge; but one thing is certain, that the dog shows himself more frequently than the bitch, and hence, probably, throws up a stronger scent to the surface than the other, which is more chary of her appearance. The otter, as we have already said, is a "dark" animal, unknown to naturalists, except they be hunters, and then only circumstantially known: much must be left to conjecture, and remain unexplained in consequence of the silent and nocturnal movements of the animal, which preclude observation.

It is not a little remarkable that you will never see two hounds precisely alike in their mode of work. Hounds frequently inherit the peculiarities of their progenitors, their vices as well as their virtues; still, there will always be points in which they will differ as essentially as if they belonged to another race. It is the case with all hounds, whatever their game may be, whether fox, hare, or otter. In packs of fox-hounds, however, the difference between the work of one hound and another is not so distinguishable as it is among harriers and otter-hounds; and for this reason, the packs are usually so large that the hits are more instantaneously made, in consequence of the ambitious and dashing character of the fox-hound, and the greater space of ground which a large body of hounds will cover; but draft twenty couple down to ten couple, and you will then quickly discern the particular points which distinguish the several hounds. In harrier packs each hound has his separate character, and each hound his particular duty allotted to him by the rest of the pack. Old Venus goes to the head upon a dry dusty road, the rest fall back, and Venus chirps merrily forward with the scent; then Dairymaid makes a hit at the fence and breaks into the adjoining field, over which she holds the lead until they come to an old fallow; here Tidings comes in front, and with joyful note proclaims the line: then again, upon the hot foil, there is not above one hound in ten that thoroughly understands the tricksy nature of the scent, and is able to unravel every mystery of which the game is capable, displaying an instinct in his work of which it may be truly said, with Pope

""Twixt that and reason what a nice barrier,

For ever distant yet for ever near."

Amongst otter-hounds this difference of character exists in a super