THE JER-FALCON. 261 



The jer-falcon makes its nest on, or near to, the summit 

 of some lofty and inaccessible rock. The female lays three, 

 occasionally four eggs, of a dull yellow colour, mottled nearly 

 all over with pale reddish-brown ; their length is two and a 

 half inches, and breadth one inch and three-quarters. For 

 the first year the predominant colour of the young is brown ; 

 but after that time they gradually assume the whiter plumage 

 of the parents. 



When hawking was in fashion, people from all parts of 

 Europe more especially from Germany and the Nether- 

 lands were accustomed to journey to Scandinavia, for the 

 purpose of procuring the jer and other falcons. The distant 

 and lofty mountains of Sweden, as well as those of Norway,* 

 were the scene of their operations. Many of the birds were 

 taken from the nest ; but to effect the capture of the old 

 ones, or of those recently fledged, the fowlers would lie con- 

 cealed in their Tobbehyttor (a corruption of the German 

 Taubenhutteri) , or dove-huts ; and with a butcher-bird to give 

 warning of the approach of the quarry, and a pigeon as a 

 decoy, lure them into the ready-prepared toils. Those pro- 

 cured from the nest, or at least taken when very young, were 

 naturally the most docile; but even the old white birds 

 might, it is said, be tamed. 



The number of falcons obtained in bygone days from Scan- 

 dinavia was very considerable. We read, for instance, in a 

 Swedish newspaper of 1761, that in the month of October 

 of that year, falconers from Ansbach, in Germany, passed 

 through the town of Linkoping, with forty-four living birds, 



* Certain districts of that country, famous for the breed of falcons, were 

 in those times leased out by the King of Denmark to a particular family in 

 Flanders. 



