10 ART AND PRACTICE OF HAWKING 



synonym for falconry, which also, if interpreted strictly according 

 to the ornithological theory, ought to be regarded as dealing 

 with the long-winged species. 



The two-fold division, however, no matter whether it is into 

 falcons and hawks, or into short-winged and long-winged hawks, 

 seems to be insufficient and unsatisfactory. For eagles, which 

 have been, and still are, extensively used in a sport for which the 

 only English names are hawking and falconry, remain unin- 

 cluded in the two usually accepted classes. No eagle can pro- 

 perly be called either a hawk or a falcon ; and in order to find 

 a place for them amongst the birds trained and flown at quarry, 

 it seems necessary to institute a third class. What order of 

 precedence should be taken by such new class is a matter 

 of small consequence. In symmetry of shape, in its mode of 

 flying, its character, and its tastes, the eagle is as inferior to the 

 true hawk as the latter has always been deemed to be to the 

 true falcon ; and in this work, as in others on falconry, the 

 first place has been retained for the long-winged hawks, and the 

 second for the short-winged, leaving a third place for what little 

 it seems necessary to say about such eagles as we know to have 

 been flown at game. 



The long-winged hawk is known by the following character- 

 istics : — The second primary feather in the w^ing, reckoning from 

 the outside, is the longest, or at least equal in length to any 

 other, as in the merlin, which has the second and third feathers 

 very nearly or quite of the same length. The upper mandible 

 has on each of its sides, about a third part of the distance 

 from the point to the cere, a projection somewhat resembling a 

 very blunt tooth. The eye is dark brown. The wing is long 

 enough in the outer joint to come down, when closed, consider- 

 ably more than half-way between the end of the tail coverts and 

 the end of the tail itself, and in some cases, as in the hobby, as 

 far as the tail, or even farther. 



In the short-winged hawks the wing is comparatively short 

 in the outer joint, and, when expanded, presents a rounded 

 appearance at the end, the fourth primary being the longest, 

 and the first very short. That emargination, or narrowing in, 

 of the feather near its end, which is observable in the first two 

 primaries of the long-winged hawk, is still more pronounced in 

 the short-winged, and is conspicuous in the third and fourth 

 primaries also. The tail is long, and large when expanded. The 

 iris is of some shade of yellow, light or dark. The upper man- 

 dible curves in a smooth line, without any projecting tooth. 



In the eagles the tail is shorter and stouter. The outer 



