202 BOOKS ON FALCONRY. 



are well known to falconers in India. As to the origin of 

 Falconry in India, where it is believed to have been introduced 

 by the conquering Mahommedans in the tenth century, see 

 Schlegel, op. cit. (No. 194), pp. 59 and 64; and for details of 

 the sport as practised in that country see " An Account of the 

 Hunting Excursions of Asoph ul Doulah, Visier of the Mogul 

 Empire and Nabob of Oude, by William Blane, who attended 

 in these Excursions in the years 1785 and 1786," printed in 

 Blane's Cynegetica, or Essays on Sporting, 8vo, London 

 (Stockdale), 1788, pp. 183-201 ; Johnson, "Sketches of Indian 

 Field Sports," 8vo, London, 1822, pp. 46, 47 (the pages relating 

 to Hawking have been extracted by Belany, No. 64, pp. 51-56) ; 

 Corvin Wierbitski (No. 115), Burton (No. 66), and Delme Rad- 

 cliffe (No. 72). The last-named writer gives a complete list of 

 the hawks now in use in India, with their native names. 



Reference should also be made to the valuable remarks of 

 Mr. R. Thompson on hawking in India, printed in Hume's 

 " Rough Notes on Indian Oology and Ornithology," 8vo, Cal- 

 cutta, 1869, pp. 57, 69, 74-75, 86, 93, ii4-ii5> and 125. 



arable. 



As frequent allusion is made in the Persian and Arabic titles to 

 "the year of the Hegirk," indicated by the letters a.h., it may be 

 well to give here a brief explanation of a term which applies to a 

 celebrated epoch used by the Arabs and Mahometans for the com- 

 putation of time. 



The word is Arabic, written Hejera, and signifying " flight," the 

 Arabic letters of which it is composed being H,J, r, a, or dh, and 

 the supplied vowels are pronounced short. 



The event which gave rise to this epoch was Mahomet's flight 

 from Mecca to Medina, when the rulers of Mecca, fearing he might 

 raise a sedition, expelled him from that city in the year of our Lord 

 622. 



The first year of the Hegirk, therefore, corresponds with a.d. 622. 

 To save the trouble of computation, the reader may be referred to 

 Marsden's very useful " Table," printed in the Philosophical Trans- 



