282 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
refer to Falconry as practised in this reign for the purpose of 
contradicting a statement which has been copied over and over 
again appears in almost every book which contains a notice of — 
the Peregrine Falcon. It was sanctioned by Yarrell in the first 
edition of his ‘ History of British Birds,’* and is repeated even in 
Prof. Schlegel’s great work, that author apparently having had no 
opportunity of testing the accuracy of a story which he was obliged 
to quote secondhand. The statement in question is to the effect 
that hawks in former days were so valuable that, in the reign of 
James I., Sir Thomas Monson gave £1000 for a cast—t.e., for two. 
This is not the fact, for if we trace the story back to the original 
narrator of it, Sir Antony Weldon, we find the truth to be that Sir 
Thomas Monson spent £1000 before he succeeded in getting a 
perfect cast of falcons for flying at the Kite. His words are :— 
“ Sir Thomas Monson desired to have that flight [7.e., at the Kite] 
in all exquisiteness, and to that end was at £1000 charge in 
Gos Faulconst for that flight; in all that charge [i. e., after going 
to all that expense] he never had but one cast would performe it, 
and those had killed nine Kites, never missed one.” { 
These were the palmy days of Hawking, when the sovereigns 
on both sides of the channel (James I. and Louis XIII.) were 
enthusiastic falconers, giving every encouragement to the sport, 
when the species of hawk carried was indicative of the rank of 
the owner, and when the best books on the subject were written 
by English and French masters of the craft. § 
* In the fourth edition of this standard work, the Editor, with his usual 
acumen, has been careful to correct the mistake. 
+ The Gerfalcon was sometimes called Gos-faleon. It is related by Godscroft 
that at the Battle of Ancram Moor, in 1545, as the English and the Scots were 
approaching each other on a piece of low flat ground called “ Panier-heugh,’ 
a Heron, roused from the marshes by the tumult, soared away between the 
encountering armies. “Oh!” exclaimed Angus [Archibald Douglas, seventh Earl of 
Angus} ‘that I had here my white Gos-hawk, that we might all yoke at once!” 
t «The Court and Character of King James,’ sm. 8vo, 1650, pp. 104, 105. 
g Amongst the English works printed about this time may be mentioned George 
‘Turberville’s ‘ Book of Faleonrie’ (L575, 2nd ed. 1611); Gervase Markham’s ‘ Gentle- 
man’s Academie’ (1595) and ‘ Country Contentments’ (1611); William Grindal’s 
‘Hawking, Hunting, Fowling, and Fishing’ (1596); Simon Latham’s ‘ Faulconry, or 
the Falcon’s Lure and Cure’ (1615, 2nd book, 1618); and Edmund Bert's ‘ Treatise 
on Hawks and Hawking’ (1619); while in France appeared the equally valuable and 
now scarce works of Jacques de Fouilloux, Jean de Franchiéres, Guillaume Tardif, 
and D’Arcussia. The last-named writer, who frequently accompanied Louis XIII. 
on his hawking excursions, has left us some capital descriptions of particular flights 
which he witnessed. 
