The training required for hawks which are to "wait on" is different. It has already been said that merlins and the short-winged hawks cannot be taught this accomplishment. A merlin which will wait on even for half a minute is rather a phenomenon. I have had such an one, it is true, but only one. The thing is not impossible in all cases, but so rarely practicable that it is needless to speak of it. Nor is it advisable to teach the art of waiting on to any hawk which is intended to be flown at rooks, gulls, heron, or the like. But all long-winged hawks intended for game should wait on well. The whole race of peregrines and their cousins, gers, hobbies, sakers, lanners, and the humble kestrel, can all be made to wait on beautifully. Soaring (to which waiting on is so nearly similar) is the natural exercise of all these hawks. In the wild state they spend hours almost daily at it. But if they are to wait on in the rather artificial style required by the falconer, nature must be aided a little. When they are keen at coming to the lure, you should call them off, and, as they approach, jerk the lure away off the ground in front of them. When they have missed it, their impetus will carry them on beyond the place where it was, and they will rise in the air, partly turning round to see what has become of it. Then after a very short delay you may throw the lure down again, and let them have it. At the second lesson it may be hid for a longer time, and the hawk allowed to make one or two circles in the air before it is produced. At each fresh lesson make the interval of waiting longer, hiding the lure as long as the hawk is circling round within a short distance of you, but producing it when she strays away, or gives signs of being tired out. By this means she will soon learn that patience is not only a virtue, but a profitable, and even a pleasant one. For if the wild hawk soars from choice for the mere pleasure of stretching her wings, it must be natural for a trained hawk, which has so much fewer opportunities of doing this, to take a delight in it. Eyess peregrines are very unlike one another in their aptness for waiting on. Some are very slow to learn it, and can hardly, by the greatest efforts, be got to go up any height, or even to keep on the wing at all. Some few, on the other hand, take to it quite readily, and, after a few days, of their own accord mount to a great height. Of course the higher a hawk can be induced to go, the better game-hawk she will turn out.