FALCONRY 



at a considerable distance going down the wind. He was so 

 far off that the falconers hesitated whether they would venture 

 to unhood their hawks, but one of them ha\dng luckily upon 

 his wrist a famous hawk in whom he had great confidence, 

 cast him off alone. It instantly made at the heron, who 

 mounted higher in the air, though still advancing rapidly in 

 his course. The whole field was instantly in motion, and those 

 only who have hunted with our crack packs of foxhounds can 

 form an idea of the ardour with which each person including 

 the ladies strove to be foremost. The hawk made numberless 

 stoops at the heron, which his activity and stoutness enabled 

 him to avoid, and it was not until some time after the birds 

 had ceased to be visible to the chief part of the field that the 

 hawk was able, after repeatedly striking his quarry, to bring 

 him to the ground. The flight lasted twenty-six minutes, and 

 the distance from point to point exceeded six miles. The 

 height to which the birds rose was so great that, to use the 

 expression of the falconers, " they were six steeples high in the 

 air — no bigger than bimible-bees." ' 



By the way, ]\Ir. Harting remarks upon the common belief 

 that ' a heron when hard pressed and stooped at by the falcon 

 will point his beak upward and receive the descending hawk 

 upon its sharp extremity, thereby disabling, if not killing it 

 outright, Somerville represents the heron adopting this 

 method of defence — surely calculated to result in a broken 

 neck ! — and Sir Walter Scott has done the same. ' There is 

 not only no authority for this pretty story,' says Mr. Harting, 

 ' but we have the direct testimony of eye-witnesses that it 

 has never happened within their experience.' Adrien MoUen, 

 head falconer of the Loo Club, stated that in all the hundreds 

 of flights at heron he had seen, he never saw this mode of 

 defence adopted. 



Sir John Sebright, who wrote in 1826, held that the magpie 

 gave better sport with hawks than any other bird : — 



' Magpies may be flown with eyess slight falcons, and 

 afford excellent sport. A down or common, where low trees 



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