ot molest them. The following words were used: "I adjure you, O eagles!
by the true God, by the holy God, by the most blessed Virgin Mary, by the
nine orders of angels, by the holy prophets, by the twelve apostles,
&c.... to leave the field clear to our birds, and not to molest them: in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." It was at
this time that, in order to recover a lost bird, the Sire de la
Brizardiere, a professional necromancer, proposed beating the owner of the
bird with birch-rods until he bled, and of making a charm with the blood,
which was reckoned infallible.

[Illustration: Fig. 157.--Diseases of Dogs and their Cure.--Fac-simile of
a Miniature in the Manuscript of Phoebus (Fourteenth Century).]

Elzear Blaze expressed his astonishment that the ladies should not have
used their influence to prevent falconry from falling into disuse. The
chase, he considered, gave them an active part in an interesting and
animated scene, which only required easy and graceful movements on their
part, and to which no danger was attached. "The ladies knowing," he says,
"how to fly a bird, how to call him back, and how to encourage him with
their voice, being familiar with him from having continually carried him
on their wrist, and often even from having broken him in themselves, the
honour of hunting belongs to them by right. Besides, it brings out to
advantage their grace and dexterity as they gallop amongst the sportsmen,
followed by their pages and varlets and a whole herd of horses and dogs."

The question of precedence and of superiority had, at every period, been
pretty evenly balanced between venery and falconry, each having its own
staunch supporters. Thus, in the "Livre du Roy Modus," two ladies contend
in verse (for the subject was considered too exalted to be treated of in
simple prose), the one for the superiority of the birds, the other for the
superiority of dogs. Their controversy is at length terminated by a
celebrated huntsman and falconer, who decides in favour of venery, for the
somewhat remarkable reason that those who pursue it enjoy oral and ocular
pleasure at the same time. In an ancient Treatise by Gace de la Vigne, in
which the same question occupies no fewer than ten thousand verses, the
King (unnamed) ends the dispute by ordering that in future they shall be
termed pleasures of dogs and pleasures of birds, so that there may be no
superiority on one side or the other (Fig. 16