132 PEREGRINE FALCON. 



reason that I have ventured to assign it the place 

 it occupies in the present work; though at the 

 same time, I must beg to be understood as being 

 by no means perfectly convinced of the truth of 

 this supposition. The chief objection seems to be 

 the colour of the feet, which are blue, not yellow 

 as in the Peregrine. Some have supposed both 

 the Lanner and the Sacre to be varieties of the 

 Jerfalcon. 



The Jerfalcon, the Gentil Falcon, the Common 

 Falcon, the Peregrine, and the Goshawk were the 

 principal species used in the diversion of Falconry, 

 now so much in its decline, having been, in most 

 parts of Europe, superseded by the readier and 

 more certain services of the gun. 



"The art of Falconry, says the learned Sir 

 Thomas Browne, appears to have been either un- 

 known, or so little advanced among the ancient 

 Greeks and Romans, that it seems to have pro- 

 ceeded no higher than the daring of birds; which 

 makes so little thereof to be found in Aristotle, 

 who only mentions some rude practice thereof in 

 Thracia; as also in iElian, who speaks of Hawks 

 and Crows among the Indians; little or nothing 

 of true Falconry being mentioned before Julius 

 Firmicus, in the days of Constantius, son to Con- 

 stantine the great. If the Romans, says the learn- 

 ed Rigaltius, had well understood this airy chace, 

 they would have left, ' or less regarded their Cir- 

 cehsian recreations." 



In tiie European world the Germans and the 

 French seem to have been the first who devoted 



