This having exhausted Uncle Thomas’s Stories about the Vulture, and it being too late to enter upon another species, the little party bade him good night. CHAPTER IV. UNCLE THOMAS TELLS ABOUT THE VARIOUS KINDS OF FALCONS, AND DESCRIBES THE SPORT OF HAWKING AS ANCIENTLY PRACTISED IN ENGLAND. “What is the name of this Eagle?” said Mary, on a subsequent evening, pointing to one of the specimens in Uncle Thomas’s Museum. “It seems to be much smaller than either of those which you have told us about, Uncle Thomas.” “That,” said Uncle Thomas, “is not an Eagle. It belongs to the Falcon family, and is one of the most elegant of the tribe. It is the Peregrine Falcon, the species principally used when Hawking was practised as a field-sport. It is a very fine specimen, and was caught in the neighbourhood. It measured in length sixteen inches; and its wings, from tip to tip, three feet. “The Peregrine Falcon,” continued Uncle Thomas, “is found in all the temperate and colder countries of Europe, but it prefers places where it can find rocky precipices, in which to build its nest. As it has great power of wing, however, it can soon transport itself from place to place. Some one estimates its rate of flight at about an hundred and twenty miles an hour; but even that is not so rapid as the Gyr-Falcon, which is said to fly at the rate of one hundred and fifty! “A Falcon which belonged to Henry IV., King of France, on one occasion escaped from the Falconry at Fontainbleau, and was caught twenty-four hours afterwards in the island of Malta. The distance between the two places has been reckoned at 1350 miles, so that if the Falcon flew the whole time without stopping, it must have proceeded at the rate of fifty miles an hour. But as the Falcons never fly by night, supposing that it rested during the darkness, and flew only during eighteen hours, its flight was at the rate of seventy miles an hour. Even this computation, however,” continued Uncle Thomas, “is liable to considerable objections. The exact moment of its arrival at Malta cannot of course be told, as he might be in the island some time before he was discovered; and it is also probable that the day-light would not serve him to travel so long as eighteen hours.” “I wonder how any bird escapes the Falcon since he flies so fast,” said John.