40 
President, Secretary, and many of his fellow-members, that he 
has consented to try to reproduce by the pen the following 
‘lame and impotent conclusion ” of what he began “ by word 
of mouth.”’] 
As all modern Falconry is necessarily conducted very much 
in the same way—and with the same sort of hawks—as it was 
conducted by our ancestors, it is impossible to avoid some 
reference at least to ancient times, though it will be convenient 
on the present occasion to confine oneself as much as possible 
to what is not only possible, but of constant and almost daily 
practice by many amongst us, at the present day: and this the 
more from the fact that from the necessity of the case, and the 
greatly changed conditions under which Falconry, to be prac- 
tised at all, must now be practised in this and most other 
countries, it has long been very little ‘‘ en evidence” in public, 
and is pretty generally believed to have all but ceased to exist. 
This is not so. It has never yet ceased to be practised in 
Scotland from the earliest times. And the Scotch school of 
Falconers, represented by several distinguished Scotch families 
and their professional falconers, using and flying their native 
falcons at their native game, has long existed, and still 
exists. In England, from the more general practice of shooting, 
and the spread and increase of population, and enclosure of 
open land, it appears to have fallen into disuse about the time 
of the Commonwealth; whilst it lingered on the continent— 
and often on a great scale—till the period of Napoleon’s wars. 
About the close of the 18th century, Lord Orford (uncle to 
Horace Walpole) and Colonel Thornton made a very consider- 
able and successful effort to revive Hawking in this country, 
to which end they introduced “‘the Dutch School of Falconry ” 
into England, with, of course, Dutch professional falconers 
from Valkenswaard, Eindhoven, Holland—the nursery place of 
Dutch hawking, and where its practice as a profession has never 
yet been extinct. This Dutch system of hawking had extended 
into Scotland, which has always had its own native falconers : 
the Seotch using eyesses, or nestling falcons, and the Dutch 
necessarily passage hawks, or wild caught birds, since no falcon 
