450 



FALCON. 



in earlier times, when every lord rode out with his 

 peregrine on his arm, and every lady with her merlin. 

 It must be admitted that, in an economical point of 

 view, hawking was by no means a profitable sport ; 

 but, in the days when it and similar pursuits occupied 

 so much of the attention of our forefathers, the state 

 of the country was very different to what it is at pre- 

 sent. The accommodations of the mass of society 

 were few ; arid the greater part of those, even of the 

 most elevated and wealthy class, were not, generally 

 speaking, of that delicate, expensive, and perishable 

 character, which we find in modern times. The 

 baronial castle was so massy, as to be good for several 

 generations without any repair ; and the same might 

 be said qf its homely and substantial furnishings. To 

 strew the floor with rushes cost not more labour than 

 the mere laying down of a carpet, to say nothing of 

 the number of hands and length of time which must 

 be employed and occupied in the manufacture of it, 

 and of all the machinery necessary for the said manu- 

 facture. Jt was much the same in every thing else : 

 the substantial implements and utensils of the people 

 were all of a permanent and baronial character ; and 

 that tftey had been used by a long line of ancestors, 

 gave them more merit in the eyes of the life occupants, 

 than the first rate fashion of modern furnishings. At 

 the same time there were few books, and equally few 

 who either could read, or cared anything about the 

 matter. We have seen charters granted by a Bishop, 

 and signed in the Bishop's name by a lady, with the 

 expressed declaration in the docket that the reason of 

 this substitution was that the bishop could not write. 

 When this was the case with the diocesan of an ex- 

 tensive, and far from a poor, province, it could not be 

 supposed that the common file of even the lords of 

 the soil could be very literary. Thus one can readily 

 suppose that their time hung heavily upon their 

 hands ; and that, in order to escape from the ennui of 

 their own ignorant society, they were glad to claim 

 kindred with the beasts of the field and the fowls of 

 the air in every possible way. It is true that their 

 attention to these did not much promote the natural 

 history of the creatures, in any one useful or rational 

 sense of the term. But we must not blame them for 

 this : there was little or no science of any kind in those 

 days, and even down to our own times, the hunters and 

 the hawkers have done very little towards increasing 

 our rational knowledge of the animal kingdom. We 

 believe we do them little injustice (and we have 

 no wish to do them any), when we say, that all that 

 they have done, unless where the love of natural 

 history predominated over the love of mere sport, 

 would not make above a page or two in the progres- 

 sive annals of the science ; while, in the more impor- 

 tant and higher department of tracing the connection 

 between any one animal and the general system of 

 nature, we presume they could not with justice be 

 found guilty of a single paragraph. Thus the use of 

 falcons in sporting belongs to a former people, and 

 though there are still a few who keep hawks, they 

 may be regarded as being kept more from the vanity 

 of ancestry than from any direct pleasure which the 

 keepers have in the possession or use of them. No 

 doubt there are a few, on the confines of the wilder 

 districts, where there is still little to interest except 

 the wild productions of those districts, who do keep 

 falcons and fly them ; but the very fact of those per- 

 sons being found chiefly in the wild places, is of itself 

 sufficient to show that fate.*, iry is a sport of a rude 



and illiterate age of the world, and quite incongruous 

 with the character of the present times. At the same 

 time we are ready to admit that, among those who 

 require these birds as a means of killing time as well 

 as game, falconry is withal a splendid sport. The 

 perfect training of birds which are, when in a state 

 of nature, the most free and independent tenants 

 of the sky, the grace and rapidity with which they 

 perform their work, and all the circumstances of the 

 sport, when exercised bonafide against animals truly 

 wild, or left to the uncontrolled exercise of their 

 natural powers and resources, has many charms about 

 it, not the least of which is that it carries one back 

 to years which are long gone by. Now, however, it 

 has only become an antiquary's tale, and, as such, it 

 forms no portion of natural history. We have indeed 

 falconers, who fly their " gentles" at pigeons and other 

 birds which are let loose from a basket or trap ; but 

 the hunting or hawking of that which is previously 

 in possession of the hunters, is a most ludicrous mat- 

 ter an outrage upon antiquity, and puts one in 

 mind of the covering of four brick walls and a flat roof 

 over with stucco, in order to make a miserable coun- 

 terfeit of a Gothic chapel, in which the supporters 

 and the supported are made completely to change 

 places. But to return to the falcons 



The general characters of the old genus falco, 

 which included all the diurnal birds of prey except 

 the vultures, are these : the head is covered with fea- 

 thers ; beak hooked, and generally curved from its 

 origin ; at its base it has a coloured cere, more or less 

 hairy ; the under mandible obliquely rounded, and both 

 the mandibles sometimes notched ; nostrils lateral, 

 rounded, or ovoid, pierced in the cere and open ; the 

 tarsi are covered with either scales or feathers ; three 

 toes before and one behind, the outermost one fre- 

 quently connected by a membrane to the middle toe 

 at its base ; pointed and sharp claws, moveable, re- 

 tractile, and much hooked. This numerous division 

 of the diurnal birds of prey has been conveniently 

 distributed into several sections. As well as the cha- 

 racters which we have just stated, they are distin- 

 guished by a projection over the eyebrows, which 

 gives their eyes the appearance of being deeply 

 seated in their orbits, and imparts a very different 

 aspect to their physiognomy from that of the vul- 

 tures. The first plumage differs very frequently in 

 colour from that of the mature bird, which is not per- 

 fect till the third or fourth year, and even later, a 

 circumstance which has betrayed many ornithologists 

 into an erroneous multiplying of the species. In 

 general the female is about one-third larger than the 

 male, and has been providently endowed with su- 

 perior strength, because it is necessary that she should 

 both feed and protect her voracious offspring ; whereas 

 the smaller dimensions of the male are more adapted 

 to the rapidity and loftiness of flight, and is 

 accordingly more esteemed by falconers. Though 

 they are all carnivorous, they seldom, except when 

 pressed by hunger, which they are capable of endur- 

 ing a long time, feed on carrion. They have a very 

 acute sense of sight, and with surprising force pounce 

 down on their prey with the greatest accuracy and 

 promptitude ; manifesting, however, very different 

 degrees of courage in pursuit of their game. They 

 are capable, owing to their great strength, of carrying 

 birds or other animals, nearly as heavy as themselves, 

 to a considerable distance, sometimes as much as 

 forty miles or even more, for the nourishment of their 



