The other hobby, which I 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 extinct in England in his day, the flight with the merlin at larks excelled all others in this country. Catherine II. of Russia was also an ardent admirer of this diminutive squire of dames.