LAMELLIROSTRES—LANNER 



503 



also a great partiality for bones, which when small enough it 

 swallows and slowly digests. When they are too large, it is said 

 to soar with them to a great height and drop them on a rock or 

 stone that they may be broken into pieces of convenient size. 

 Hence its name Ossifrage,^ by which the Hebrew Peres is rightly 

 translated in the Authorized Version of the Bible (Lev. xi. 13; 

 Deut. xiv. 12) — a word corrupted into Osprey and misapplied to 

 a bird which has no habit of the kind. 



The Liimmergeyer of north-eastern and south Africa is deemed 

 by systematists to be specifically distinct, and is known as Gypaetus 

 meridionalis or G. midipes. In habits it seems closely to resemble the 

 northern bird, from which it differs in little more than wanting the 

 black stripe below the eye and having the lower part of the tarsus 

 bare of feathers. It is the " Golden Eagle " of Bruce's Travels, and 

 has been beautifully figured by Mr. Wolf in Riippell's Syst. Uehers. 

 der Vogel Nord-Ost-Afrika's (Taf. 1). 



LAMELLIROSTRES, Cuvier's name in 1817 2 {Rhgne Anim. 

 i. p. 527) for the group composed of the Linnsean genera Anas 

 (Duck) and Mergus (Merganser), the Anatidx of modern 

 ornithologists. 



LANNER (Fr. Lanier, Lat. Laniarius, from laniare to dissever ^), 

 a species of Falcon about which great confusion or ignorance 

 existed for many years. The older writers on Falconry, to say 

 nothing of so good a naturalist as Belon, were well acquainted with 

 it; but, as the sport fell into disuse, knowledge of the different 

 kinds of birds therein employed was gradually obscured and lost, so 

 that the Falco lanarius of Linnjeus (and therefore of precise scientific 

 nomenclature), whatever it may have been,* was, as he in 1761 

 admitted {Fauna Suec. ed. 2, p. 22) "distinctissimus a Lanario Italico," 

 and therefore certainly not the Lanner, Lanier, or Lanarius of 

 falconers. In the same way doubt may exist as to the " Lanner " of 

 some old English authors, though it is not to be questioned that 

 true Lanners were brought to England and used for Falconry. 

 Schlegel has the credit of having restored the ancient Lanner to a 



^ Among other crimes attributed to the species is that, according to Pliny 

 {Hist. Nat. lib. x. cap. 3), of having caused the death of the poet iEschylus, by- 

 dropping a tortoise ou his bald head, mistaking it for a stone ! In the Atlas 

 range this bird is said to |)rey chiefly on the Testudo mauritanica, which "it 

 carries to some lieight in the air, and lets fall on a stone to break the shell " {Ibis, 

 1859, p. 177). It seems to be the iLpir-q and 4>y]vrt of Greek classical writers. 



^ In 1805 he {Lee. d'Anat. comp. tabl. 2) had called this group Serrirostres ; 

 but whether the word was intended as Latin is doubtful. 



2 Some derive the word from lanct (wool), in allusion to the soft character of 

 the plumage ; but Littre rejected this etymology. 



* Schlegel thought it was an immature Gyrfalcon ; but that seems beyond 

 proof. 



