LARK-HAWKING 131 



latter deserved, and went up briskly again before there was 

 any chance of even trying to pick him up. 



The other hobby, which 1 trained some years before, did a 

 little better. He once made two or three rings after a wild 

 lark. The rings were very pretty, and the style of flying most 

 correct. But there was one thing wanting, the pace was 

 insufficient. To tell the truth, it was poor ; and at the risk of 

 being denounced by all ornithologists and most falconers, I 

 venture to express a doubt whether the hobby is really a fast 

 hawk. To support the common theory that he is exceptionally 

 fast we have, no doubt, the fact that he kills swallows and 

 swifts. But then he has the advantage of them, owing to his 

 habit of constant soaring at a great height. From this vantage- 

 point, if he killed one swallow out of a hundred aimed at, it 

 would not be a conclusive proof of any great speed in flying. 

 Much more difficult to explain are the passages in Latham and 

 other old writers to the effect that hobbies, and especially 

 female hobbies, have " plenty of courage," and will well repay 

 the trouble of training. Blome, in the Gentleman's Recreation 

 (1636), is especially loud in his praises of this hawk. After 

 declaring that she is very amiable, bold, and daring, and will 

 make a hawk of great delight, he adds that she may be left out 

 in the field after being fed up, and will come back home to the 

 place where she was hacked (except at migration times) ; and 

 ends up by affirming that she is " in all respects, according to 

 her capacity, as bold and hardy as any other hawk whatsoever." 

 Either the training of them has become a lost art, or the hobby 

 has changed his nature entirely since he was thus eulogised. 



Very different is the account to be rendered of the merlin, 

 so inferior in external appearance, so vastly superior in courage 

 and energy. This, the smallest of the true falcons, has not yet 

 been persecuted out of existence in England with gun and 

 snare, though the days of its disappearance are doubtless not 

 far distant. Of this little hawk I speak perhaps with undue 

 enthusiasm, having made them an object of special care. But 

 the merlin has had admirers amongst some very illustrious 

 persons. Louis XIII. kept hundreds of big hawks. He could 

 have a good day's hawking whenever he liked at cranes, kites, 

 or herons. Yet he did not disdain, amidst all these temptations, 

 to devote a whole morning to lark-hawking with merlins, and 

 was overjoyed at killing one lark with a cast of them. It is true 

 that this was a winter lark, but it was only a lark for a' that ! 

 One of the greatest falconers that modern times have produced, 

 Mr. E. C. Newcome, declared that after heron-hawking, already 



