162 
of old were, were not always very exact in their observations in 
regard to Natural History details—they wanted the birds only for 
hawking purposes, and they were not as much troubled in their 
minds about whether such and such a bird should be referred to 
such and such a species or not, as we are at the present day. 
Still, men that had practical acquaintance with many hundreds of 
individual birds, could hardly fail to notice that, out of a large 
number, many would be found to agree in possessing certain 
characteristics that the others had not: they might vary in other 
particulars, but they would agree in these. So the falcons came 
to be roughly classified, and when they were classified, each of 
these groups possessing these common characteristics received a 
distinct name. Of course, many of these characteristics were not 
such as we are now-a-days in the habit of considering of import- 
ance. The male bird, for instance, in some cases received a 
different name from the female, and the immature birds were named 
differently again. So it came about that when ornithologists first 
took the subject in hand, they placed but little faith in the distinc- 
tions made by the falconers of old, and that when they read that 
the falconers had distinguished three distinct forms of Jerfalcon, 
the distinctions were passed by unheeded. About fifty years ago, 
Mr. John Hancock, of Newcastle, took the matter up, and, after 
carefully comparing great numbers of specimens, he came to the 
conclusion that the old falconers were, after all, correct in this 
view, and that there were two, if not three, distinct forms, or what 
some would call species, of Jerfalcon. These views have met with 
a good deal of opposition from that time down to the present day; 
for while there are cabinet zoologists of the first rank that go to 
the length of splitting the Jerfalcons up into five distinct species, 
there are others, equally well qualified to judge, who stoutly 
maintain that these so-called species are nothing more than mere 
varieties, or races, of one and the same species. 
Much of the difficulty of coming to a common conclusion in 
this case arises from the difference of opinion in regard to what 
constitutes a characteristic of specific value. If no such thing as 
a varietal form, or a geographical race, existed, there would be no 
