620 JO URNAL, BOMB A Y NA TUBAL HISTOM Y SOCIETY, Vol X 



its having been Imown to the Assyrians.* Bonomi f mentions ** ^ 

 bird of prey, which seems by the shortness of its beak to be a falcon/' 

 as perched on the head of a riderless horse in a hunting-scene frora' 

 Khorsabad. The ancient Egyptians certainly worshipped a species of 

 hawk, and at least half tamed them X feeding eyesses and old birds, 

 respectively, on the brains and flesh of other birds, of which quails 

 are mentioned by name. But it does not appear that they trained them. 

 However, in the first century of our era, Pliny had heard of some sort 

 of falconry in Thrace, "above Amphipolls'''§, though he did not under- 

 stand it himself. Martial |j understood it fairly well, having, perhaps, 

 seen it in hi& Native Spain. Had it been in Italy, Pliny would not 

 have failed to know the fact and understand the matter. The very 

 word " Falco " is not used by Pliny and Martial, v/ho write 

 *' Accipiter." Probably the art, under the Caesars as under the 

 Kaisar-i-Hind, was less in fashion in the home counties than in out- 

 of-the-way provinces. One Julius Firmicus is said to have written 

 about it in the fourth century. But in few libraries can a quotation 

 from this gentleman's works be verified. It is to be hoped that some 

 of our Sanskrit-reading members can tell us the age of falconry in 

 India. It is now most practised by Musalmans, and the technical 

 terms seem to be mostly of their importation. But the Bedars of 

 Shorapur, who are a pretty old Peninsular breed of quasi-Hindus, 

 practised it as a '^ home industry " in Meadows Taylor's day. It does 

 not appear to be found in our cave-temple paintings or sculptures. 



The Badminton \vriter on the subject treats it as " the most ancient 

 of sports " (Coursing and Falconry, pp. 217, 219), apparently on the 

 stren o'th of Sir A. H. Layard's note quoted above. But, even if the 

 Assyrians did practise it, they seem to have preferred almost every 

 other form of the chase that was known to their civilization, from 

 throwino" the boomerang up to hunting lions in chariots. 



* Nineveh and BabyloQ, 1853, p. 483, note. This note seems to be absent from the abridg- 

 ment of 1882. 

 •j- Nineveh and Palaces, 3rd edition, p. 202. 



I jElian, De Natura Aaimalium, LVII, c. 9. He wrote in the Second Century, A.D. 



& Nat. Hist. Book X., Cap. 8. The region indicated is that of Mount Ehodope or there- 

 abouts. 



II Epigrams, Book XIV, 216, Martial's "Accipiter" was, he says expressly, one that 

 bad been wild ; what modern falconers rather loosely call a '* passage hawk " and not an 

 " eyess " or hand-reared nestling. 



