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 Limmergeyer of north-eastern and south Africa is deemed 
by systematists to be specifically distinct, and is known as Gypaetus 
meridionalis or G. nudipes. 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 7ravels, and 
has been beautifully figured by Mr. Wolf in Riippell’s Syst. Uebers. 
der Vogel Nord-Ost-Afrika’s (Taf. 1). 
LAMELLIROSTRES, Cuvier’s name in 1817? (Regne Anim. 
i. p. 527) for the group composed of the Linnzan genera Anas 
(Duck) and Mergus (MERGANSER), the Anatide 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 Linneus (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 
1 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 Aischylus, by 
dropping a tortoise on his bald head, mistaking it for a stone! In the Atlas 
range this bird is said to prey chiefly on the Testudo mauritanica, which “‘it 
carries to some height in the air, and lets fall on a stone to break the shell” (Zdis, 
1859, p. 177). It seems to be the épwn and ¢jv7 of Greek classical writers. 
2 In 1805 he (Lee. d’ Anat. comp. tabl. 2) had called this group Serrirostres ; 
but whether the word was intended as Latin is doubtful. 
3 Some derive the word from Jana (wool), in allusion to the soft character of 
the plumage ; but Littré rejected this etymology. 
4 Schlegel thought it was an immature GyRFALCON ; but that seems beyond 
proof, 
