A few mouthfuls should always be given to him the moment the hood is put on.
Hawks, when hooded, are always quiet. In the field the hood prevents them from baiting when birds rise, and, at other times, from being alarmed at any thing that may approach them.
It may, perhaps, appear paradoxical to assert, that hawks, by being kept hooded, are brought nearer to their natural habits, but this is undoubtedly the case, for by this treatment they are induced to remain at rest when they are not either feeding, or in pursuit of game; and such are their habits in a wild state, when left undisturbed.
When the hawk is become tolerably tame, he may be unhooded, and, after having eaten a few mouthfuls, be placed on the block, and enticed to come from thence to the fist when held near him. He will soon learn to fly to it when it is presented to him at the distance of several feet, the fist being, of course, always well garnished with meat.
When he has been practised in this manner for a few days, if he be unhooded on the fist, and a small piece of meat be thrown on the ground, to the distance of two or three feet, he will fly down to it, and having eaten it, fly back to the fist, enticed, as usual, by the offer of food.
The sport of hawking is generally placed at the head of those amusements that can only be practised in the country, and probably it obtained this precedency from its being a pastime so generally followed by the nobility, not in this country only, but also upon the continent. Persons of high rank rarely appeared without their dogs and their hawks; the latter they carried with them when they journeyed from one country to another, and sometimes even when they went to battle, and would not part with them to procure their own liberty when taken prisoners. Sometimes they formed part of the train of an ecclesiastic.
These birds were considered as ensigns of nobility: and no action could be reckoned more dishonourable to a man of rank than to give up his hawk.
I cannot trace the origin of hawking to an earlier period than the middle of the fourth century. Julius Firmicus, who lived about that time, is the first Latin author that speaks of falconers, and the art of teaching one species of birds to fly after and catch others.
The grand fauconnier of France was an officer of great eminence; his annual salary was four thousand florins; he was attended by fifty gentlemen, and fifty assistant falconers; he was allowed to keep three hundred hawks; he licensed every vender of hawks in France, and received a tax upon every bird sold in that kingdom, and even within the verge of the court; and the king never rode out upon any occasion of consequence without this officer attending him.