up of many hundreds of individual cries, is heard swelling and dying
away, and occasionally, when he drops lower than usual, rising to a
sharp scream of terror.

Sometimes when I have been riding over marshy ground, one of these hawks
has placed himself directly over my head, within fifteen or twenty yards
of me; and it has perhaps acquired the habit of following a horseman in
this way in order to strike at any birds driven up. On one occasion my
horse almost trod on a couple of snipe squatting terrified in the short
grass. The instant they rose the hawk struck at one, the end of his wing
violently smiting my cheek as he stooped, and striking at the snipe on a
level with the knees of my horse. The snipe escaped by diving under the
bridle, and immediately dropped down on the other side of me, and the
hawk, rising up, flew away.

To return. I think I am justified in believing that fear of hawks, like
fear of men, is, in very nearly all cases, the result of experience and
tradition. Nevertheless, I think it probable that in some species which
have always lived in the open, continually exposed to attack, and which
are preferred as food by raptors, such as duck, snipe, and plover, the
fear of the falcon may be an inherited habit. Among passerine birds I am
also inclined to think that swallows show inherited fear of hawks.
Swallows and humming-birds have least to fear from raptors; yet, while
humming-birds readily pursue and tease hawks, thinking as little of them
as of pigeons or herons, swallows everywhere manifest the greatest
terror at the approach of a true falcon; and they also fear other birds
of prey, though in a much less degree. It has been said that the
European hobby occasionally catches swal-lows on the wing, but this
seems a rare and exceptional habit, and in South America I have never
seen any bird of prey attempt the pursuit of a swallow. The question