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middle, and black at the points; and the legs are yellow. It is found in several parts of Great Britain and Ireland. Willoughby tells us, that there was an aery of them in Whinfield Park, Westmoreland; and the bird soaring in the air with a cat in its talons, which Barlow drew from the very fact which he saw in Scotland, is of this kind. The cat's resistance brought both animals to the ground, when Barlow took them up; and afterwards caused them to be engraved, as struggling, in the thirty-sixth plate of his Collection of Prints. Turner says, that in his days this bird was too well known in England; for it made terrible destruction among the fish. All authors indeed agree, that it feeds principally on fish, which it takes as they are swimming near the surface, by darting down upon them, not by diving or swimming, as some authors have pretended, who furnish it for that purpose with one webbed foot to swim with, and another divided foot to take its prey with. Martin, speaking of the great eagles of the Western Isles, says, that they fasten their talons in the back of the fish, commonly salmon, which are often above the water, or very near the surface. Those of Greenland will even take a young seal out of the water. It also preys on water-fowl. This species is frequent in North America, and was met with in Botany Island by captain Cook.

11. F. aquila Peruvianus, or furcatus; the Peruvian kite, or swallow-tailed hawk, has a black bill, less hooked than usual with rapacious birds; the eyes are large and black, with a red iris; the head, neck, breast, and belly, are white; the upper part of the back and wings a dark purple; but more dusky towards the lower parts, with a tincture of green. The wings are long in proportion to the body, and, when extended, measure four feet. The tail is dark purple mixed with green, and remarkably forked. This most elegant species inhabits only the south parts of North America; and that only during summer. They feed chiefly flying; for they are much on wing, and prey on various sorts of insects. They also feed on lizards and serpents; and will kill the largest of them with the utmost ease. They quit North America before winter, and are supposed to retreat to Peru.

12. F. aquila Sinesis, the Chinese eagle, is one of the largest of the sub-genus. The cere and legs are yellow; the body is reddish brown above and yellowish beneath. The bill and claws are large and black; the irides brown; the crown dusky; the coverts and quill-feathers marked with a dusky band. It inhabits India and China.

13. F. aquila tharus, the Chilese eagle, has a crest of black feathers on the head; legs and cere yellow; the body blackish white; feet scaly, with very strong claws. It is common in Chili; is about the size of a large capon, and feeds on dead carcases, like the bastard eagles. The female is smaller than the male, and grayish; and lays five eggs at a brood.

14. F. aquilinus, the aquiline falcon, or small Arierican eagle, of Buffon, has yellow legs and cere; the upper parts blue; the under reddishwhite; the neck purplish-red; the sides of the head downy, and hardly covered with feathers;

eye-lids bristly; the orbits yellow; and irides orange colored; the bill blue, and claws black. The male is from sixteen to eighteen inches long; the female twenty-three. It inhabits South America.

15. F. buteo, the buzzard, is the most common of the hawk kind in England. It breeds in large woods, and usually builds on an old crow's nest, which it enlarges, and lines with wool and other soft materials. It lays two or three eggs, perfectly white, or spotted with yellow. The cock buzzard will hatch and bring up the young, if the hen is killed. The young keep company with the old ones for some time after they quit the nest; which is not usual with other birds of prey, who always drive away their brood as soon as they can fly. This bird is very sluggish and inactive, and is much less in motion than other hawks; remaining perched on the same bough for the greatest part of the day, and is found at most times near the same place. It feeds on birds, rabbits, moles, and mice; it will also eat frogs, earthworms, and insects. This species is subject to some variety in color. Some have their breast and belly of a brown color, and are only marked across the craw with a large white crescent; but usually the breast is of a yellowish white, spotted with oblong rust-colored spots, pointing downwards: the back of the head and neck, and coverts of the wings, are of a deep brown, edged with a pale rust-color; the middle of the back covered only with a thick white down. The tail is barred with black, and ashcolor, and sometimes with ferruginous.

16. F. cachinnans, the laughing falcon, has yellowish legs and cere, and white eye-brows; the body is variegated with brown and white; and it has a black ring round the top of the head. It makes a laughing kind of noise when it observes any person, and is a native of South America.

17. F. candicans, the white gyrfalcon of Pennant, has legs and cere of a bluish ash, the bill bluish, and greatly hooked; the eye dark blue; the throat of a pure white; the whole body, wings, and tail of the same color, most elegantly marked with dusky bars, lines, or spots, leaving the white the far prevailing color. There are instances, but rare, of its being found entirely white. In some the whole tail is crossed by remote bars of black or brown; in others, they appear only very faintly on the middle feathers: the feathers of the thighs are very long and unspotted: the legs strong, and of a light blue. Its weight is forty-five ounces Troy; length near two feet; extent four feet two inches. This species has the same manners and haunts with the Iceland falcon. It is very common in Iceland; is found in Lapland and Norway; but rarely in the Orkneys and North Britain. In Asia it dwells in the highest points of the Uralian and other Siberian mountains, and dares the coldest climates throughout the year. It is kept in the latitude of Petersburgh, uninjured in the open air during the severest winters. This bird is pre-eminent in courage as well as beauty, and is the terror of 'other hawks. It was flown at all kinds of fowl, how great soever, but its chief game was herons and cranes. This species, with

the Iceland and Greenland falcons, are reserved for the kings of Denmark; who send their falconer with two attendants annually into Iceland to purchase them. They are caught by the natives, a certain number of whom in every district are licensed for that purpose. The falconer examines the birds, rejects those which are not for his purpose, and gives the seller a written certificate of the qualities of each, which entitles him to receive payment from the king's receivergeneral. They are taken in the following manner:-Two posts are fastened in the ground, near their haunts. To one is tied a ptarmigan, a pigeon, and a cock or hen, fastened to a cord, that it may flutter, and so attract the attention of the falcon. On the other post is placed a net, distended on a hoop, about six feet in diameter. Through this post is introduced a string, above 100 yards long, which is fastened to the net, in order to pull it down; and another is fastened to the upper part of the hoop, and goes through the post to which the bait is tied. As soon as the falcon sees the fowl flutter on the ground, he takes a few circles in the air, to see if there is any danger, then darts on his prey with such vicience as to strike off the head, as nicely as if it was done with a razor. He then usually rises again, and takes another circle, to explore the place a second time; after which he makes another stoop, when, at the instant of his descending, the man pulls the dead bird under the net; and, by means of the other cord, covers the falcon with the net at the moment it has seized the prey; the person lying concealed behind some stones, or flat on his belly, to elude the sight of the falcon. As soon as one is caught, it is taken gently out of the net, for fear of breaking any of the feathers of the wings or tail: and a cap is placed over its eyes. If any of the tail feathers are injured, the falconers have the art of grafting others.

18. F. columbarius, the pigeon-hawk of Catesby, weighs about six ounces. The bill is black at the point, and whitish at the base: the iris of the eye is yellow; the base of the upper mandible is covered with a yellow wax; the upper parts of the body and wings are brown: the tail is brown, but has four white bars. The interior vanes of the quill feathers have large red spots. The tail is marked with large regular transverse white lines; the throat, breast, and belly, are white, mixed with brown; the small feathers that cover the thighs reach within half an inch of the feet, and are white, with a tincture of red beset with long spots of brown; the legs and feet are yellow. It inhabits America, from Hudson's Bay as low as South Carolina. In the last it attains to a larger size. In Hudson's Bay it appears in May on the banks of the Severn, breeds, and retires south in autumn. It feeds on small birds; and on the approach of any person flies in circles, and makes a great shrieking. It forms its nest in a rock, or some hollow tree, with sticks and grass, and lines it with feathers: and lays from two to four eggs, white, spotted with red. In Carolina it preys on pigeons, and the young of wild turkeys.

19. F. gentilis, the gentle falcon, inhabits the Berth of Scotland, and was in high esteem in the

days of falconry. It makes its nest in rocks: i is larger than the goshawk; the cere and legs are yellow, the head of a light rust color, with black streaks; the whole upper side from chin to tail white, with dusky heart-shaped spots: the back of a brown color; the tail barred with four or five bars of black, and as many of ashcolor; the tips of all the tail feathers white.

20. F.gypætus albicilla, the cinereous bastard eagle, is inferior in size to the golden eagle; the head and neck are of a pale ash color; the body and wings cinereous, clouded with brown; the quill feathers very dark: the tail white; the legs feathered but little below the knees, and of a very bright yellow. The male is of a darker color than the female. The bill of this species is rather straighter than usual, which seems to have induced Linnæus to rank it among the vultures. But Pennant observes, that it can have no title to be ranked with that genus, the characteristical mark of which is, that the head and neck are either quite bare, or only covered with down; whereas this bird is wholly feathered. This species is in size equal to the black eagle, and inhabits Europe as high as Iceland and Lapland, and particularly the north of Scotland. It is common in Greenland, but does not extend to America; or according to Pennant, if it does, it varies into the white-headed eagle, to which it has great affinity, particularly in its feeding much on fish; the Danes therefore call it fiskeorn. It is common in the south of Russia, and about the Volga, as far as trees will grow; but is very scarce in Siberia. It inhabits Greenland the whole year, sitting on the rocks with flagging wing, and flies slowly. It makes its nest on the lofty cliffs, with twigs, lining the middle with mosses and feathers: lays two eggs, and sits in the end of May, or beginning of June. These birds prey on young seals, which they seize while floating on the water; but oftentimes, by fixing their talons in an old one, they are overmatched, and drawn down to the bottom, screaming horribly. They feed also on fish, especially the lump-fish, and a sort of trout: on ptarmigans, auks, and eider ducks. They sit on the top of rocks, attentive to the motion of the diving-birds; and with quick eyes observe their course by the bubbles which rise to the surface of the water, and catch the fowls as they rise for breath. The Greenlanders use their skins for clothing next to their bodies; eat the flesh, and keep the bill and feet for amulets. They kill them with the bow, or take them in nets placed in the snow properly baited; or tempt them by the fat of seals, which the eagles cat to an excess, and which occasions such a torpidity as to make them an easy prey. In Scotland and the Orkneys they feed on land animals as well as fish.

21. F. gypætus barbatus, the bearded bastard eagle, or bearded vulture of Linnæus, is of a whitish fiery-red color, brown on the back, with a black stripe above and below each eye. It inhabits the Alps, is four feet long, and ten feet in extent; the bill is of an ash color, mixed with reddish; fringed at the sides and below with stiff black bristles. The wings have twenty-eight bright ash-colored quill feathers, and the tail twelve. This species build their nests in the caverns of

inaccessible rocks, and lay four or five eggs each brood. They keep in small flocks, and feed on dead carcases, like the vulture tribe, which they resemble in general appearance; but they have their head and necks covered with feathers, and prey on living animals, as chamois, goats, and lambs.

22. F. gypætus harpyja, the harpy, the vulture harpyja of Linnæus, the yzquachtli, or crested eagle of Willoughby, has a crest of long feathers on the hind head: the back, neck, and crest are black; the under parts variegated with black, white, and tawny; under the maw the feathers are long and white, and, when irritated, hang down almost to the ground; the eyes have a nictitating membrane. This species inhabit the warm parts of America; are almost as large as a sheep, and are said to be able to cleave a man's skull with one stroke.

23. F. gypætus serpentarius, the secretary, or vultur serpentarius of Latham, is of a dark leaden color; has a crest on the hind head, which he can erect or depress at pleasure; the legs are remarkably long; the claws short, black, and hooked; the wing quills, vent feathers, and thighs are black; and the two mid tail quills much longer than the rest. It is about three feet high when erect; the space round the eyes is orange colored; the irides pale ash; the bill is black with a white cere, but wants the bristly beard, which is a characteristic of the subgenus of gypæti;-a circumstance, which, with the great length of its legs, induced Gmelin to rank this species as a distinct subgenus. These birds inhabit Africa, Asia, and the Philippines. They prey on quadrupeds of the order of glires, and on amphibious animals, but are easily tamed.

24. F. gyrfalco, the Iceland falcon, or brown gyrfalcon, has a strong bill, much hooked, the upper mandible sharply angulated on the lower edges, with a bluish cere: the head is of a very pale rust color, streaked downwards with dusky lines; the neck, breast, and belly, are white, marked with cordated spots; the thighs white, crossed with short bars of deep brown: the back and coverts of the wings are dusky, spotted, and edged with white: the exterior webs of the primaries dusky mottled with reddish white, the inner barred with white; the feathers of the tail are crossed with fourteen or more narrow bars of dusky and white; the dusky bars regularly opposing those of white: the wings, when closed, reach almost to the end of the train: the legs are strong and yellow. The length of the wing, from the pinion to the tip, is sixteen inches. This species is an inhabitant of Iceland, and is the most esteemed of any for the sport of falconry. They will last ten or twelve years; whereas those of Norway, and other countries, seldom are fit for sport after two or three years' use.

25. F. lanarius, the common lanner, has the cere yellow, sometimes bluish; the legs and bill blue; the breast white, tinged yellow, with brown spots; the wing quills and tail dusky, with oval rusty spots and has a white line over each eye. This species is about the size of the buzzard; inhabits Europe, the Uralian, Baraba, and Tartarian deserts; but is rarely found in Britain. It builds on low trees, and is migratory.

26. F. nisus, the sparrow-hawk, with green, cere, yellow legs, a white belly undulated with gray, and the tail marked with blackish belts. This is the most pernicious hawk we have; and makes great havoc among pigeons and partridges. It builds in hollow trees, in old nests of crows, large ruins, and high rocks: it lays four white eggs, encircled near the blunt end with red specks.

27. F. palumbarius, the goshawk of Ray, with black cere edged with yellow; yellow legs, a brown body, the prime feathers of the tail marked with pale streaks, and the eyebrows white. It was once in high esteem among falconers, being flown at cranes, geese, pheasants, and partridges. It breeds in Scotland, and builds its nest in trees. It is very destructive to game, and dashes through the woods with vast impetuosity; but if it cannot catch the object of its pursuit almost immediately, desists, and perches on a bough till some new game appears. This species is common in Muscovy and Siberia. They extend to the river Amur; and are used by the emperor of China in his sporting progresses, attended by his grand falconer, and 1000 of the subordinates. Every bird has a silver plate fastened to its foot, with the name of the falconer who has the charge of it; that in case it should be lost it might be brought to the proper person.

28. F. subbuteo, the hobby, was used like the kestrel in the humbler kind of falconry; particularly in what was called daring of larks: the hawk was cast off; the larks, aware of their most inveterate enemy, were fixed to the ground. for fear; by which means they became a ready prey to the fowler, by drawing a net over them. The back of this bird is brown; the nape of the neck white; and the belly pale, with oblong brown spots. It is a bird of passage; but breeds in Britain, and migrates in October.

29. F. sufflator, the Surinam falcon, has yellowish cere and legs; the body is of a brownish white color: and the coverts of the eyes are bony. He has a fleshy lobe between the nostrils; which Rolander says, when angry or terrified, be inflates till his head becomes as big as his whole body.

30. F. tinnunculus, the kestrel, breeds in the hollows of trees, in the holes of high rocks, towers, and ruined buildings. It feeds on field mice, small birds, and insects; which it discovers at a great distance. This is the hawk that we so often see in the air fixed in one place; and, as it were, fanning it with its wings; at which time it is watching for its prey. When falconry was in use in Great Britain, this species was trained for catching small birds and young partridges. It is easily distinguished from all other hawks, by its colors. The crown of the head and the greater part of the tail are of a fine light gray; the back and coverts of the wing of a purplish ed, elegantly spotted with black: the whole under side of the bird of a pale rust-color spotted with black. The male weighs six ounces; the female eleven.

31. F. versicolor, the variegated falcon, or spotted falcon of Pennant, inhabits England; is about the size of the common buzzard; and has the bill black; the cere and legs yellow; the

head and upper parts white, with light reddish brown spots; the wings dusky and barred with ash; the rump and under parts white; the breast being marked with a few rusty spots; and the tail quills barred with light and dark brown. FALCON, n. s. Fr. faucon; Lat. fulco; FALCONER, n. s. Ital. falconne; à rostro FALCONET. falcato sive adunco,' from the falcated or crooked bill, says Dr. Johnson. A hawk trained for sport; a kind of cannon: a falconer is one who breeds and trains hawks; one who follows the sport of fowling with hawks.

Mahomet sent janizaries and nimble footmen, with certain falconets and other small pieces, to take the streights.

Knolles.

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Pope.

A falconer Henry is, when Emma hawks : With her of tarsels, and of lures he talks. Prior. [A falcon is] a sort of cannon, whose diameter at the bore is five inches and a quarter, weight seven hundred and fifty pounds; length seven feet; load two pounds and a quarter; shot two inches and a half diameter, and two pounds and a half weight. Harris.

Falconet is a sort of ordnance, whose diameter at the bore is four inches and a quarter, weight four hundred pounds, length six feet, load one pound and a quarter, shot something more than two inches diameter, and one pound and a quarter weight. Id. FALCON, in heraldry, is usually represented with bells tied on his legs: when decorated with hood, bells, virols (or rings), and leishes, then in blazon he is said to be hooded, belled, jessed and leished, and the colors thereof must be named.

FALCONER. See FALCONRY. The French kings had a grand falconer, an office dismembered from that of grand veneur, as early as the year 1250. A falconer should be well acquainted with the quality and mettle of his hawks, that he may know which of them to fly early, and which late. Every night after flying he should give them casting; one while plumage, sometimes pellets of cotton, and at another time physic, as he finds necessary. He ought also every evening to make the place clean under the perch, that by her casting he may know whether she wants scouring upwards or downwards. He must water his hawk every evening, except on such days as she has bathed; after which, at night, she should be put into a warm room, having a candle burning by her, where she is to sit unhooded, if she be not ramage, that she may prick VOL. IX.

and prune herself. He should always carry proper medicines into the field, as hawks frequently meet with accidents there. He must take with him all his hawking implements; and should be skilful in making lures, hoods of all sorts, jesses, bewets, and other furniture. He ought to have his coping irons, to cope his hawk's beak when overgrown, and to cut her pounces and talons as there shall be occasion: nor should his cauterising irons be wanting

FALCONER (William), an ingenious Scotch sailor and poet, born in the county of Fife, of humble parentage. He was bred to the sea; and, though he possessed few of the advantages which result from education, he had good natural talents, which he cultivated with assiduity. In 1751 he published a poem on the death of the prince of Wales, which possesses considerable merit; but his reputation rests on The Shipwreck, a poem in three cantos, in which he beautifully describes the scenes he himself witnessed, being shipwrecked in a voyage from Alexandria to Venice, when only three of the crew were saved. The motto is taken from the second book of the Eneid:

Quaque ipse miserrima vidi,

Et quorum pars magna fui. The publication of the Shipwreck recommended him to the then duke of York; to whom he afterwards wrote an Ode, which obtained him the post of purser to the Royal George. He also published a very useful and laborious work, entitled The Marine Dictionary, in one vol. 4to., besides a poem against Wilkes and Churchill, under the title of The Demagogue. In 1770 he went out a volunteer in the Aurora frigate, sent to carry Messrs. Vansittart, Scraston, and Ford, the supervisors appointed to regulate our East India settlements; which vessel, after it had touched at the Cape of Good Hope, was never more heard of. Falconer is said to have been the author of the popular song-The Storm.

FALCONER (William), M. D., was born at Chester in 1743; and his father was for some time recorder of that city. He studied medicine at Edinburgh, and took his doctor's degree there in 1766; after which he established himself at Bath. He became physician of the general hospital of that city, and was elected a member of the Royal Society, to whose Transactions, as well as to those of the Manchester Philosophical Society, he was a frequent and valuable contributor. Dr. Falconer, after a long and useful life, died at Bath, August 30th 1824. His principal works are, 1. Dissertatio de Nephritide vera. 2. Essay on Bath Waters, 2. vols, 8vo. 3. Observations on Dr. Cadogan's Dissertation on the Gout, 8vo. 4. Observations and Experiments on the Poison of Copper, 8vo. 5. Essay on the Water commonly used at Bath, 8vo. Experiments and Observations, 3 parts, 8vo. 7. Observations on Diet and Regimen for Valetudinarians, 8vo. 8. Remarks on the Influence of Climate, 4to. 9. Account of the Epidemic Catarrhal Fever, called the Influenza, 8vo. On the Influence of the Passions upon the Disorders of the Body, 8vo. 11. Essay on the Preservation of the Health of Persons employed in

D

6.

10.

Agriculture, 8vo. 12. Practical Dissertation on the Effects of Bath Waters, 8vo. 13. Tracts and Collections relating to Natural History, 4to. 14. Observations respecting the Pulse, 8vo. 15. Examination of Dr. Heberden's Observations on the Plague, 8vo. 16. Account of an Epidemical Catarrhal Fever at Bath in 1803, 8vo. 17. Dissertation on Ischias, or the Disease of the Hipjoint. 18. Arrian's Voyage round the Euxine Sea translated, with a Geographical Dissertation, and Three Discourses, 4to.

FALCONETTO (John Maria), a celebrated architect of Verona, was born in 1458, and died in 1534. He erected the church della Madonna delle Grazie, at Padua; and a music-hall, praised by Serlio, who called it La Rotonda di Padova. This building is said to have suggested to Palladio the idea of the villa Capra, which served as the model of the duke of Devonshire's house, at Chiswick. Falconetto built several other palaces and churches in Italy, where his works are highly esteemed.

FALCONIA (Proba), an Etrurian Christian poetess who flourished in the reign of the emperor Honorius, towards the end of the fourth century. She composed a celebrated cento from the works of Virgil, comprising the history of the Old Testament, and that of Jesus Christ, from the Gospels. The best edition is that of Wolfius, 1734, 4to.

FALCONNET (Stephen Maurice), a French sculptor of the eighteenth century, of low extraction but who happily obtained the assistance of Lemoine in his studies. Catharine II. of Russia ultimately patronised him, and he was employed by her to execute the colossal statue of Peter the Great at Petersburgh. He wrote notes on the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth books of Pliny's Natural History; Observations on the Statue of Marcus Aurelius; and other works relating to the arts, printed together in 6 vols. 8vo., Paris, 1781: and died at Paris in 1791.

FALCONRY, the art of training different kinds of hawks, but more especially the larger ones, called falcons, to the art of taking wild fowl, &c. Falconry was anciently a favorite amusement in Britain, and to carry a hawk was esteemed a distinction of a man of rank. The Welsh had a saying, that you may know a gentleman by his hawk, horse, and greyhound. In those days a person of rank seldom went without one on his hand. Even the ladies were not without them; and in an ancient sculpture in the church of Milton Abbas, in Dorsetshire, appears the consort of king Athelstan, with a falcon on her hand, tearing a bird.

Though generally disused, this amusement is partially reviving in some places, and has never been wholly discontinued in certain favorable districts.

In our own country, however,' says Mr. Pennant, I cannot trace the certainty of falconry till the reign of king Ethelbert, the Saxon monarch, in the year 760, when he wrote to Germany for a brace of falcons, which would fly at cranes and bring them to the ground, as there were very few such in Kent.'

Of the Anglo-Saxons, Mr. Turner says, 'Hawks and falcons were also favorite subjects of amuse

ment, and valuable presents in those days, when the country being much over-run with wood, all species of the feathered race must have abounded. A king of Kent begged of a friend abroad, two falcons of such skill and courage as to attack cranes willingly, and, seizing them, to throw them to the ground. We may infer the common use of the diversion from his forbidding his monks to hunt in the woods with dogs, and from having hawks and falcons. An AngloSaxon, by his will, gives two hawks (hafocas), and all his stag-hounds (header hundas), to his natural lord. The sportsmen in the train of the great were so onerous on lands, as to make the exemption of their visit a privilege. Hence a king liberates some lands from those who carry with them hawks or falcons, horses or dogs. The Saxon calendar, in its drawings, represents hawking in the month of October.'

The Saxon Dialogues in the Cotton library speak thus of the fowier:- How do you deceive fowls? Many ways; sometimes with nets, sometimes with gins, sometimes with lime, sometimes whistling, sometimes with hawks, sometimes with traps.' 'Have you a hawk? ‘I have! Can you tame them? 'I can; what use would they be to me if I could not tame them? Give me a hawk.' 'I will give it willingly if you will give me a swift hound; which hawk will you have, the greater or the less?? "The greater; how do you feed them?' 'They feed themselves and me in winter, and in spring I let them fly to the woods. I take for myself young ones in harvest, and tame them.' And why do you let them fly from you when tamed ?? 'Because I will not keep them in summer as they eat too much.' 'But many feed and keep them tame through the summer that they may again have them ready.' So they do, but I will not have that trouble about them as I can take many others.'

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"It seems highly probable,' continues Mr. Pennant, that falconry had its rise in Scythia, and passed thence to the northern parts of Europe. Tartary is even at present celebrated for its fine breed of falcons; and the sport is in such general esteem, that, according to Olearius, there was no hut but what had its eagle or falcon. The boundless plains of that country are as finely adapted to the diversion, as the wooded or mountainous nature of most parts of Europe is ill calculated for that rapid amusement.'

To the Romans this diversion was scarcely known in the days of Vespasian; yet it was introduced soon after. Probably they adopted it from the Britons; but they greatly improved it by the introduction of spaniels into the island. In this state it appears among the Britons in the sixth century. Gildas, in his first epistle, speaking of Maglocunus, on his relinquishing ambition, and taking refuge in a monastery, compares him to a dove, that with various turns and windings takes her flight from the talons of the hawk. In after times hawking was the principal amusement of the English: a person of rank scarce stirred out without his hawk on his hand: which in old paintings is the criterion of nobility. Harold, afterwards king of England, when he went on an embassy into Normandy, is painted

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