SAKER FALCON. 27 
restored the ancient name of Le sacre to the bird described as such 
by Gesner, Belon, and Buffon, and I think he has done good service 
to natural science by his researches on the subject; inasmuch as the 
Lanner Falcon, hitherto confounded with almost every other member 
of its family, will now take its proper place, and the distinction between 
it and the Saker, so ably drawn by M. Schlegel, and which in both 
instances I shall give almost in that naturalist's own words, must for 
the future be without doubt. 
In the extracts from Schlegel's great work on Falconry, which I 
shall make about this rare bird, that naturalist says, "it is not found, 
to my knowledge, in any of the English or French Museums." There 
is, however, now a living specimen of this bird in the Gardens of the 
Zoological Society, to which my attention was drawn by Mr. Gurney. 
"A living specimen of this bird from Tarsus, now in the Gardens of 
the Zoological Society, has a different plumage from any other specimens 
I have seen. This individual is cross-barred like a female Merlin." 
In a subsequent note Mr. Gurney says, that he has seen another 
specimen in the collection of the East India Company, in which the 
plumage is the same as in the above bird, namely, having distinct, 
brown, transverse markings all across the back, shoulders, and wing 
coverts. Mr. Gurney considers these are the markings of adult age, 
as the specimens in the Zoological Gardens, (labelled F. lanarius, 
Linnaeus,) had few, if any, of them when first sent there. There is a 
similar specimen in the Norwich Museum from Athens. Mr. Gurney 
still thinks (1873) that these birds are the same as F. Hendersoni, and 
only a phase of F. sacer, a plumage which he says the adult birds of 
that Falcon sometimes (but apparently not always) assume. If these 
birds turn out to be distinct, Hodgson's name F. mihipes has priority 
over Hendersoni. 
M. Schlegel observes: — "In the works of antiquity, • though the 
description given exactly corresponds with this species, we cannot say 
that any distinctive name was given to it. In the middle ages authors 
equally puzzled themselves and others about this bird, while the English 
naturalists, (none with the exception of Gould having seen the Saker 
in nature,) have only compiled what they have read of it in the works 
of their predecessors. Forster's is the young of the White Jer-Falcon. 
Linnaeus omits it altogether. Buffon's figure appears to be the true 
Saker, painted from a specimen in the Royal Menagerie; his description 
he takes from Belon. Pennant, Latham, Gmelin, and other naturalists 
to the end of the last century, have made their Saker from a melange 
of other birds described by their predecessors. Huber confounds his 
pretty little figure with the Lanner, by which name he designates it; 
