Note 15 — PREFACE.

The reader will be amused with Simon Latham’s epilogue to the third edition of his “Faulconry,” wherein he combats (for he wrote in ticklish times, 1658) with his usual quaintness of style and illustration, the notion of the sinfulness of rural sports: inferring that they may “be lawfully and conscientiously used with moderation by a magistrate or minister, or lawyer or student, or any other seriously employed, which in any function heat their brains, waste their bodies, weaken their strength, weary their spirits; that as a means (and blessing from God) by it their decayed strength may be restored, their vital and animal spirits quickened, refreshed, and revived, their health preserved, and they better enabled (as a bow unbended for shooting) to the discharging of their weighty charges imposed upon them.”