GREENLAND FALCON. 43 



example described and figured in Pennant's ' British 

 Zoology,' was said to have been shot near Aberdeen, and 

 the engraving shows it to have been a young bird. Messrs. 

 F. H. Salvin and Brodrick, in their work before cited, also 

 state that on two occasions, about 1840, a large white Falcon 

 Was seen in Ross-shire, and that in 1850 Messrs. St. John 

 and Hancock saw a Greenland Falcon near Elgin. On the 

 3rd of March, 1866, according to Dr. Saxby (Zool.s.s. 

 p. 288), a female was shot on Balta, one of the Shetlands, and 

 this example is now in the collection of Mr. J. H. Gurney, 

 Junior. In Ireland, Thompson mentions one killed more than 

 thirty years since in Donegal, and subsequently a second, 

 shot at Drumboe Castle in the same county. Mr. Blake- 

 Knox has recorded a third Irish specimen, which is in the 

 Museum of the Dublin Natural History Society, and appears 

 to have been killed in the winter of 18623. 



Little is known of the nidification of this Falcon, but it 

 probably does not differ much in this respect from the bird 

 next to be described. Holboll, who was for some years 

 Governor of the Danish settlements in Greenland, states 

 that he never saw but one breeding pair of white Falcons, 

 and the only large Falcon's nest he took evidently belonged 

 to the Iceland form, or, at any rate, to that race of it which 

 inhabits South Greenland. Three eggs obtained through 

 him, however, and marked as those of the white bird, are in 

 the collection formed by the late Mr. Wolley, and measure 

 from 2-27 to 2'12 by 1-88 to 1'75 in. They are suffused 

 with pale reddish-orange, having a few spots of a darker 

 orange-brown or dull red, or are mottled with pale brownish- 

 orange on a white ground. 



So much has been written concerning Falconry, that it 

 need not be dwelt upon here at any length. No birds were 

 more eagerly sought and more highly prized by the followers 

 of that now nearly obsolete sport than the Greenland Fal- 

 cons captured in Iceland, and sent thence to the potentates of 

 Norway and Denmark. The preference accorded to these 

 white birds is of very ancient date, for Professor Schlegel, 

 in his ' Traite de Fauconnerie,' at once the most learned 



