John seated himself on the ground before the bird and began clucking to it softly, with the index finger of his right hand extended and pointing straight at the bird's eyes; then he turned quietly in whichever direction the bird moved, slowly waving his hand round and round in a circle and never taking his eyes off the bird's eyes.
Gradually the hawk ceased to run about, then stood still gazing steadily, as though fascinated, at John's finger. It would shut its eyes slowly, then open them suddenly, only to shut them again more slowly than before. At first the bird stood perfectly erect; then its head began gradually falling over on its shoulder, and, without any warning, it tumbled backwards, its eyes shut, its legs sticking straight up in the air, its body perfectly rigid. John continued for a time to wave his hand in a circle with the index finger extended; then he walked over to the porch leaving the hawk on the ground, where he lay for nearly thirty minutes, when he gradually returned to consciousness.
A number of persons walking by had stopped in the street to look at John and the bird, and now exclamations of surprise were heard as they saw the actions of the hawk.
"What did you do to that bird?" asked a gentleman of John; "I never in my life witnessed so strange a performance."
"I call that hypnotism," said the lad. "I have been working with him every day since I brought him home, and for a week I have never failed to bring him under my influence and put him to sleep in this way. If I go to the cage to feed him, he flies at me in a great rage at first, but if I pass my finger in a circle before him several times he becomes quiet, and will take a mouse from my hand without biting or tearing me with his talons. Sometimes I partly hypnotize him and lay the mouse at his feet, and although he may be very hungry he will not touch the food until I let him out from under the influence of my finger. When he is over being hypnotized he is as fierce as he was when I brought him home, and I do not believe he can ever be made tame like other birds. Perhaps if I had captured him when he was young, with the down still on him, I could have tamed him, but now he is too old and fierce."
"Well, my lad," said one of the men, laughing, "if he is not tamed you have him pretty well under your thumb and finger at least."
John's wonderful hypnotic influence over the hawk was soon known throughout the town and crowds of people often gathered to see him go through this truly wonderful feat of hypnotizing the fierce hawk.
The hawk belongs to the family of the Falconidæ, which is so called from the Latin word falcis, meaning a scythe, the talons of the Falconidæ being curved in the form of a scythe, thus giving the name to the species.
The wings of the hawk are so short they do not extend to the tip of the tail, for which reason it is called an ignoble bird of prey, to distinguish it from the true falcon, the wings of which extend to the tip of the tail and which is called a noble bird of prey. The hawk's bill is short, curved from the base, often terminating in a sharp point called a tooth. They have rather short, exceedingly strong legs and long incurved talons with which they tear their prey.
The species are numerous and widely distributed over the world; the goshawk and the sparrowhawk are the best known and most important. The hawk is a diurnal bird of prey, which means that it hunts in the day time. It flies with exceeding swiftness, having been known to travel a distance of 1,350 miles in twenty-four hours.