NOTES TO THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 259 



opportunities of joining him and of watching his skill, for 

 nothing pleased him better than the company in the field of 

 any who took an interest in the art of which he was so great 

 a master. But, from the causes already assigned, herons grew 

 yearly fewer and fewer, until from their scarcity it became 

 impossible to train a hawk to fly them. Rooks, as affording the 

 next best kind of flight available, gave a certain amount of sport, 

 and Mr. Newcome was at great pains to form a rookery near 

 his house, succeeding at last, but only after many failures. 



" The open country arpund Hockwold, Wilton, and Feltwell 

 was his most constant ground, and here from the beginning of 

 March until the corn was well grown he might be nearly always 

 met. He had a boy to carry the cadge, and occasionally to 

 unhood a second hawk, but he was his own falconer both at home 



and afield Somewhat later in the season Lakenheath and 



Wangford Warrens, in Suffolk, were places of resort ; and here 

 Stone Curlews often furnished a flight, while sometimes the 

 hawks were taken into the fens for the chance of a Crow or a 

 Pie. When the corn-fields were cleared he had some diversion 

 with Merlins, but herein he was not so very successful, for the 

 larks, as soon as they had got over their moult, and were strong 

 upon the wing, generally beat their pursuers, which, it must be 

 remarked, were eyesses. 



" I remember his once having a Sparrow-hawk which was rather 

 good at taking blackbirds, but I do not think he ever possessed a 

 Goshawk while I knew him ! " 



In 1852 Mr. Newcome took up his abode at Feltwell Hall, 

 and there he lived until his death, on the 22nd September 187 1, 

 in his sixty-second year. 



In an interesting review of the second edition of " Falconry 

 in the British Islands " (No. 67) which appeared in the 

 Quarterly Review for July 1875, the writer, referring to 

 the loss occasioned to the sport by the recent death of Mr. 

 Newcome, remarked (p. 183): " On field or fen, on moor or 

 mere, by the riverside or on the racecourse, no man had more 

 friends or fewer enemies than the late Edward Clough Newcome. 

 But from his own Norfolk ' brecks ' to the bogs of Ireland, from 

 Salisbury Plain to the heaths of Brabant and the fells of Norway, 

 he, from his boyhood, followed the sport of Falconry more 

 keenly than any other; sharing its comparative prosperity of 



