86 BIRDS OF PREY. 



rect descent, like the true Falcon. They were caught 

 in nets baited with live pigeons, and reduced to obedi- 

 ence by the same system of privation and discipline as 

 the Falcon. 



A pair of these birds were kept for a long time in a 

 cage by Buffon ; he remarks, that the female was at least 

 a third larger than the male, and the wings, when clos- 

 ed, did not reach within 6 inches of the end of the tail. 

 The male, though smaller, was much more fierce and 

 untamable. They often fought v/ith their claws, but 

 seldom used the bill for any other purpose than tearing 

 their food. If this consisted of birds, they were plucked 

 as neatly as by the hand of the poulterer ; but mice were 

 swallowed whole, and the hair and skin, and other indi- 

 gestible parts, after the manner of the genus, were dis- 

 charged from the mouth rolled up in little balls. Its cry 

 was raucous, and terminated by sharp, reiterated, pierc- 

 ing notes, the more disagreeable the oftener they were re- 

 peated, and the cage could never be approached without 

 exciting violent gestures and screams. Though of different 

 sexes, and confined to the same cage, they contracted no 

 friendship for each other which might soothe their im- 

 prisonment, and finally, to end the dismal picture, the fe- 

 male, in a fit of indiscriminate rage and violence, mur- 

 dered her mate in the silence of the night, when all the oth- 

 er feathered race were wrapped in repose. Indeed their 

 dispositions are so furious, that a Goshawk, left with any 

 other Falcons, soon effects the destruction of the whole. 

 Their ordinary food is young rabbits, squirrels, mice, 

 moles, young geese, pigeons, and small birds, and, with 

 a cannibal appetite, they sometimes even prey upon 

 the young of their own species. They construct their 

 nests in the highest trees, and lay from 2 to 4 eggs of a 

 bluish-white, marked with lines and spots of brown. 



