SAKER FALCON. 33 



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 pre- 

 decessors. Huber confounds his pretty little figure with 

 the Lanner, by which name he designates it; so has 

 Bechstein, having, like Temminck and Naumann, 

 received his specimens from the Vienna Museum, the 

 only place where the true Saker then existed; they 

 have described it as Lanner. The Saker is very rare 

 now in collections, and it is not found, to my know- 

 ledge, in the English or French Museums." (Schlegel 

 writes in 1844-53.) 



The Saker has been very well figured under the 

 name of Lanner, by Gould, Naumann, and Susemihl. 



The word Saker or Sacer, used in Europe since 

 the Emperor Frederick, is the Arabic name for Falcon; 

 it must not be confounded with the Latin sacer, 

 which means "sacred," for this mistake has caused the 

 F. sacer to be confounded with the Sacred Falcon of 

 the Egyptians, and has been one of the means of 

 throwing confusion over its history. 



Several have been killed in Hungary, and young 



