58 
The noblest of all possible of flights, in which the powers 
of a trained hawk could be employed, were confessedly those of 
the wild kite, and the heron. Neither of these, of course, ex 
necessitate rei, could be effected in the waiting on style, neither 
kite, nor heron, allowing of that. In fact, nine times out of ten, 
in flying at the heron (the only one of these two grand chasses 
possible at the present day, from the simple reason of the 
disappearance of the kite as a common bird, entirely from the 
British Isles, and generally so throughout Europe) the hawk or 
hawks employed, have to be unhooded, and cast off, at the 
heron, high in air, and it is to be pulled down—if pulled down 
‘this well-armed, strong-winged, fowl, is to be—simply and 
solely by strength of wing and talon, of the far smaller falcon, 
aided by her courageous heart. It were too long a task for me 
here to essay to recount, how the princes and nobles of old, flew 
“Falco milvus, regalis” of yore, for they had first to procure hawks 
of sufficient strength and courage (Jerfalcons they, by prefer- 
ence); next, “to find their hare”—viz., the crafty aerial 
scavenger, with the forked tail, and powers of flight only a little 
inferior to their own, but coupled with a craven spirit; and 
thirdly, to bring him down from a speck in the blue, to a distance 
possible to be reached, by his intended assailants. All this, 
before the interesting struggle could even be begun—a struggle 
which neither I, nor any living falconer has seen in this 
degenerate age, nor ever will, I trow, unless some enthusiast 
to whom the expenditure of time and money are literally “no 
object” will spend not a little of both, in emulating the 
deeds of his fathers, having first discovered kites enough, in 
a country as open as the best part of Salisbury Plain was, 150 
years ago. 
The flight at the heron is universally esteemed, next: and 
has been practised in perfection, by the English and Dutch 
falconers of the Loo Club, at the Royal Palace of the Loo, in 
Holland, under the presidency of Prince Alexander of the 
- Netherlands, until within some 40 years ago, when the Club was 
given up, and since then no heron hawking has taken place at 
the Loo. I find in “ Fauconnerie par Schlegel et Wolverhorst,”’ 
