DISAPPEARANCE OF THE KITE 405 



relic of the past, and in less than half an hour I left 

 the room the happy possessor of the bird in question, 

 which I subsequently presented to the Museum of 

 the Essex Field Club. 



Contemplating its great forked tail and ample 

 pinions, one's thoughts naturally wandered back to 

 the days when the Royal Kite or Fork-tailed dead, 

 as it was locally called, was one of the commonest 

 birds in this country. Time was when it was 

 stringently protected as a useful scavenger in great 

 towns, and history tells us how foreigners of note, 

 sufficiently distinguished to have their travels 

 written down, were struck on coming to England 

 with the number and tameness of the kites which 

 they saw here. Thus so long ago as 1465, when 

 Baron von Rozmital, brother to the Queen of 

 Bohemia, journeyed to England, and, travelling by 

 way of Sandwich and Canterbury to London, stood 

 upon old London Bridge, which he described as 

 having buildings upon it throughout its entire 

 length, he was struck with the number of Kites 

 which he saw, to injure which, he was told, was a 

 serious offence. This remark was confirmed some- 

 what later by the French naturalist, Pierre Belon, 

 (1555). and by Clusius (Charles L'Ecluse), who 

 visited England in 1571, and in a note to his trans- 

 lation of Belon's work observed that it was forbidden 

 to kill these birds, since they collected and devoured 

 the refuse of the street, and even of the river itself. 



James L protected kites for another reason; 

 they furnished the best of flights to his trained 

 Jerfalcons, a sport to which he was much addicted, 



