FABRICIA FALCON. 



449 



aphides, which invariably fix themselves on the 

 tops. 



Beans are cultivated on farms possessing a soil 

 suitable for them. As before observed, it is only 

 on naturally rich and heavy land that the culture of 

 beans is profitable. In some districts wheat and 

 beans are alternately raised on the same fields for 

 many years together. The wheat stubble is dunged 

 in the autumn, and then ploughed in ; the surface 

 become* mellowed by the frosts of winter, and early 

 in January is harrowed smooth, and the seed is im- 

 mediately either drilled in by a machine, or dibbed 

 by hand. The crop is kept clean by the hoe during 

 summer, and cut and carried as early in the autumn 

 as possible, to allow for ploughing, and sowing the 

 seed. 



Good crops are sometimes reaped from lighter 

 descriptions of land, but these can only happen in 

 consequence of the season being what is called ' a 

 dripping one ;' because, if dry, a light unprofitable 

 return will certainly follow. 



The best varieties of the common bean for garden 

 culture are the mazagan, early longpod, sword long- 

 pod, green or nonpareil longpod, Taylor's large 

 Windsor, common ditto, and green ditto. Farmers' 

 varieties are small horse, the pigeon, the Heligo- 

 land, and mazagan. The larger sorts are also grown 

 by farmers for the seedsmen. 



FABRICIA (Gaertner). A genus of New Hol- 

 land evergreen shrubs, belonging to the order Myr- 

 tacece. Generic character : calyx nearly superior, 

 five-cleft ; corolla of five clawless petals ; stamens 

 inserted on the throat of the calyx ; filaments awl- 

 shaped ; anthers roundish ; style simple ; stigma 

 capitate ; capsule many-celled; seed small and winged. 

 These plants are suitable for a lofty greenhouse or 

 conservatory, and grow well on loam or moor earth. 

 They are propagated by cuttings. 



FALCON (Falco). A genus of Accipitres, Rap- 

 tores, or birds of prey ; and in some respects the 

 most interesting of the whole order, and indeed of all 

 the feathered race. They are inferior in size to the 

 eagles and vultures, and also, feathers included, to 

 some of the owls ; but they are, of "all birds, the most 

 symmetrical in their forms, the most elegant in the 

 style of their flight, and the most courageous and 

 daring in the capture of their prey. It is indeed im- 

 possible to imagine a more beautiful adaptation than 

 that of the falcon to the air and the air to the falcon. 

 Light and graceful in their forms, firm in their plum- 

 age, beautifully adjusted in the relative proportions 

 of their different structures, the falcons are per- 

 fect models. Not the eagle itself has a keener or 

 more beautiful eye, though the eagle has to look out 

 for prey which is lurking on the ground ; and not any 

 birds, even those which are most constantly on the 

 wing, have their organs of flight so finely formed, and 

 so firm in their texture, as the falcons. Nor are their 

 organs of prehension and of preparing their food at 

 all inferior. The beak of the falcon is not a large 

 beak ; neither are the claws of as large a size as they are 

 in other birds of prey, which are less dashing, and 

 even less powerful in the style of their preying. Vul- 

 gar belief is apt to associate power with those elements 

 only which strike the first and unreflecting observa- 

 tion as being of the very highest order ; and hence, a 

 great beak and great claws, and the talons bent till 

 they are semicircles, are the common notions of power- 

 ful armature in a bird of prey. But there cannot be a 

 NAT. HIST. VOL. II. 



greater mistake than this, or anything more calculated 

 to give a false impression of that in which real power 

 of action consists. Mere size is in itself a disadvan- 

 tage ; because matter, how much soever there may be 

 of it, contains in itself no principle of action, and 

 never moves unless it is moved by a mechanical or a 

 vital impulse. Hence, in proportion as the beak of a 

 bird is large and heavy, it requires the greater quantity 

 of muscle to put it in action ; and we know well, from 

 comparing large and small animals of the same kind, 

 that the large one, though its mass may give it great 

 power for a short effort, is soon exhausted, and that 

 the real power of endurance is in the small. So also 

 in the claws of a bird of prey, curvature, beyond a cer- 

 tain degree, is a means of weakness, if the claw is to 

 be an instrument for giving a death-stroke, and not a 

 mere instrument of prehension. Thus, upon looking 

 at the claws of the harpy eagle of America, and at 

 those of one of the finest and boldest falcons of the 

 northern mountains, one would be very apt to suppose 

 that, from the size and curvature of the former, and 

 also the size of the bird, it would be invincible ; but 

 if one of those large and lumbering catchers of fish 

 were to meet in the free air of heaven with the white 

 falcon of Iceland, and if the spirit of the falcon 

 were up, for she seldom engages in mere strife, one 

 stroke of her comparatively small claw would tumble 

 the harpy to the earth. A very remarkable instance 

 of the comparative feebleness of those crooked-clawed 

 fishing birds of prey lately occurred at a collection in 

 London, where a large and powerful osprey had 

 been incautiously put into the same cage with a 

 buzzard ; and it had very nearly been made buzzard's 

 food before the keepers could separate them. Some 

 very characteristic species of the falcon will be found 

 figured in the accompanying plate FALCONS. 



In order, however, fully to appreciate the beauty of 

 that adaptation, of which the falcons furnish so fine 

 an instance, we must consider the medium in which 

 they act, and the mode of their action in that medium. 

 Now, though there are considerable differences of 

 structure and of action among the different species or 

 sub-divisions of falcons ; yet they may be said to cap- 

 ture their prey in the free air, or to wound it there 

 and send it down to the earth, more exclusively than 

 any other birds of prey. In general flight the falcons 

 do not perhaps rise so high as some of the eagles ; and 

 it is not necessary that they should ; for while the 

 eagle mounts up for the purpose of surveying a large 

 horizon of the ground, the falcon scans a far extent 

 of that air in which it floats ; and its higher flight and 

 more powerful wing, enable it to occupy a higher 

 place in the sky, and take a wider range than any of 

 the hawks, in which the wings are shorter, broader, 

 and rounder than they are in the falcons, in order to 

 suit a flight which consists of shorter stretches with 

 more risings and descents. 



From the rapidity of their flight, and the length of 

 time which they can continue on the wing, falcons 

 maybe said to have command of the entire globe; 

 though there are different species adapted to different 

 localities, and it may be said that the more powerful 

 and more splendid ones have their native localities in 

 the cold and temperate latitudes. There are indeed 

 few parts of the world without falcons of some descrip- 

 tion or other; but those of the warm latitudes an 1 , 

 generally speaking, of smaller size, less powerful win., 

 and far inferior celebrity to the noble hawks of the 

 north, which was the appellation given to the falcons 

 F F 



