490 KITE 
few years it seems to have been exterminated throughout the 
ereater part of England, certain woods in Huntingdonshire and 
Lincolnshire and in the Western Midlands, as well as Wales, 
excepted.t In these last a small remnant still exists; but 
the well-wishers of this beautiful species are naturally chary of 
giving information that might lead to its further persecution. In 
Scotland there is no reason to suppose that its numbers suffered 
much diminution until about 1835 or even later, when the system- 
atic destruction of “vermin” on so many moors was begun. In 
that kingdom, however, it is now as much restricted to certain dis- 
tricts as in England or Wales, and those districts it would be 
equally inexpedient to indicate. 
The Kite is, according to its sex, from 25 to 27 inches in length, 
about one half of which is made up by its deeply-forked tail, capable 
of great expansion, and therefore a powerful rudder, enabling the 
bird while soaring on its wide wings, more than 5 feet in extent, to 
direct its circling course with scarcely a movement that is apparent 
to the spectator below. Its general colour is pale reddish-brown or 
cinnamon, the head being greyish-white, but almost each feather 
has the shaft dark. ‘The tail-feathers are broad, of a light red, 
barred with deep brown, and furnish the salmon-fisher with one of 
the choicest materials of his “flies.” The nest, nearly always built 
in the crotch of a large tree, is formed of sticks intermixed with 
many strange substances collected as chance may offer, but among 
them rags? seem always to have a place. The eggs, three or four 
in number, are of a dull white, spotted and blotched with several 
shades of brown, and often lilac. It is especially mentioned by old 
ordinary trained Falcons, and in older days practically became limited to those of 
the sovereign. Hence the Kite had attached to it, especially in France, the epithet 
of ‘‘royal,” which has still survived in the specific appellation of regadis applied 
to it by many ornithologists. The scandalous work of Sir Antony Weldon 
(Court and Character of King James, p. 104) bears witness to the excellence of 
the Kite as a quarry in an amusing story of the ‘‘ British Solomon,” whose 
Master-Falconer, Sir Thomas Monson, being determined to outdo the performance 
of the French king’s falconer, who, when sent to England to shew sport, ‘‘ could 
not kill one Kite, ours being more magnanimous than the French Kite,” at last 
succeeded after an outlay of £1000, in getting a cast of Hawks that took nine 
Kites running—‘‘never missed one.” On the strength of this, James was 
induced to witness a flight at Royston, “but the Kite went to such a mountee as 
all the field lost sight of Kite and Hawke and all, and neither Kite nor Hawke 
were either seen or heard of to this present.” 
? One most fatal way of destroying Kites is described in the curious book pub- 
lished in 1814 by Col. George Hanger addressed 7'o all Sportsmen and particu- 
larly to Farmers and Gamekecpers (p. 80). 
* Thus justifying the advice of Autolycus (Winter's Tale, act iv. sc. 3)— 
‘“When the Kite builds, look to lesser linen”—very necessary no doubt to the 
laundresses of former days when the bird commonly frequented their drying 
grouuds, 
