xiv INTRODUCTION. 



Latin, De Arte Venandi cum Avibus, was the first which 

 appeared in the West, and is still one of the best which 

 exists. It has been translated into German by Pacius (No. loi), 

 and its marked influence on the literature of the subject is 

 perceptible on examining the subsequently published treatises 

 of the French author Tardif and our English Turbervile. 



In the Middle Ages the Germans were great falconers ; so 

 also were the French, and the natives of Brabant, of whom a 

 celebrated Spanish falconer in 1325 wrote that they were the 

 best falconers in the world. To a less extent the art was 

 practised in Spain and Italy during many centuries, and books 

 were written in all these countries by those who had become 

 proficient in the art, and were fired by the enthusiam of their 

 success. The Kings of Norway and Denmark preferred hunting 

 to hawking, but rendered good service to the sister sport by 

 procuring, from various parts of Scandinavia, the celebrated 

 jerfalcons of Northern Europe, which were held in the highest 

 esteem by those to whom they were sent as presents. 



Although the precise date of the introduction of Hawking 

 into England cannot now be ascertained, we know from 

 ^several sources that it was practised by our ancestors in early 

 Saxon times. In a letter addressed by King Ethelbert (a.d. 

 748-760) to Boniface, Archbishop of Mayence, who died in 

 755, the monarch asked him to send over two falcons that 

 would do to fly at the crane, for, said he, " there are very 

 few birds of use for that flight in this country" — i.e., in 

 Kent. Asser, in his Life of Alfred the Great, particularly 

 refers to the king's love of hawking ; and William of Malmes- 

 bury records much the same of Athelstan, who procured his 

 hawks from Wales. The same historian says of Edward the 

 Confessor that his chief delight was to follow a pack of swift 

 hounds and cheer them with his voice, or to attend the flight 

 of hawks taught to pursue and catch their kindred birds. 



So general, indeed, was the pastime of Hawking in Saxon 

 times, that the monks of Abingdon found it necessary in 821 

 to procure a charter from King Kenulph to restrain the practice 

 in harvest-time, in order to prevent their crops from being 

 trampled upon. (Dugdale, Mottasticon, i. p. 100.) 



