the irids yellow ; tail-feathers white with 
brown transverse stripes, brown at the tips 
and edges ; claws grey : the lacer in- 
habits Europe, Tartary in Asia, and many 
parts of North America; it is two feet long, 
patient of cold; used in hunting the white 
heron : the head pale brown ; wing-coverts 
and primary quill feathers with transverse 
white lines ; tail brown, with oval transverse 
red spots on the sides ; legs feathered to the 
toes : and the maguirostns, or great billed 
falcon, found in Cayenne, a little larger than 
the sparrowhawk ; legs shorter ; bill longer, 
thicker, black ; irids orange ; feathers above 
and on the breast brown edged with rusty ; 
claws black. See Plate Nat. Hist. figs. 192, 
193, 195, and 196. 
There are some other species distinguished 
by ornithologists. Among these are two de- 
scribed by Mr. Bruce ; of which one deserves 
particular notice, as being not only the largest 
of the eagle kind, but supposed to be 
the largest" bird that flies. Pie calls it 
the golden eagle ; by the natives it is vul- 
garly called abon duchn, or father long- 
beard. 
FALCONRY, the exercise of taking wild- 
fowl by means of hawks. There are only 
two countries in the world where we have 
any evidence that the exercise of hawking 
was very antiently in vogue. These are 
Thrace and Britain. In the former it was 
pursued merely as the diversion of a particu- 
lar district, if we may th-lieve Pliny (b. x. 8.), 
whose account is rendered obscure by the 
darkness of his own ideas of the matter. The 
primaeval Britons, with a fondness for the ex- 
ercise of hunting, had also a taste for that of 
hawking ; and every chief among them main- 
tained a considerable number of birds for that 
S[xirt. To the Romans this diversion was 
scarcely known in the days ot Vespasian; 
yet it was introduced immediately afterwards. 
Most probably they adopted it from the Bri- 
tons ; but we certainly know that they 
greatly improved it by the introduction 
of spaniels into the island. In this state 
it appears among the Roman Britons 
in the sixth century . Gildas, in a remark- 
able passage in his first epistle, speaks of 
Maglocunus, on his relinquishing the sphere 
of ambition, and taking refuge in a monas- 
tery ; and proverbially compares him to a 
dove, that hastens away at the noisy ap- 
proach of the dogs, and with various turns 
and windings takes her flight from the talons 
of the hawk. 
In after-times, hawking was the principal 
amusement of the English: a person of rank 
scarcely stirred out without his hawk on his 
hand; which, in old paintings, is almost the 
criterion of nobility. Harold, afterwards king 
of England, when he went on a most import- 
ant embassy into Normandy, is painted em- 
barking with a bird on his finger, and a dog 
under his arm: and in an anticnt picture of 
the nuptials of Henry VI. a nobleman is re- 
presented in much the same manner ; for 
in those days, “ it was thought sufficient for 
noblemen to winde their horn, and to carry 
their hawk fair, and leave study and learn- 
ing to the children of mean people.” 
The expence was great that sometimes 
attended this sport. In the reign of James I. 
sir Thomas Monson is said to have given 
1000/. for a cast of hawks: we are not then 
to wonder at the rigour of the laws that 
VoL. I. 
FALCONRY. 
tended to preserve a pleasure which was 
carried to such an extravagant pitch. In the 
34th of Edward III. it was made felony to 
steal a hawk ; to take its eggs, even in a 
person’s own ground, was punishable with 
imprisonment for a year and a day, besides a 
fine at the king’s pleasure : in queen Eliza- 
beth’s reign, the imprisonment was reduced 
to three months ; but the offender was to 
find security for his good behaviour for seven 
years, or lie in prison till he did. 
The falcons or hawks that were in use in these 
kingdoms are now found to breed in Wales, 
and in North Britain and its isles. The pe- 
regrine-falcon inhabits the rocks of Caernar- 
vonshire. The same species, with the gyr- 
falcon, the gent'll, and the gos-hawk,are found 
in Scotland, and the lanner in Ireland. 
We may here take notice, that the Nor- 
wegian breed was, in old times, in high es- 
teem in England : they were thought bribes 
worthy a king. Jeotfrey Fitzpierre gave two 
good Norway hawks to king John, to obtain 
for his friend the liberty of exporting 100 cwt. 
of cheese ; and Nicholas the Dane was to 
give the king a hawk every time he came into 
England, that he might have free liberty to 
traffic throughout the king’s dominions. 
They were also made the tenure* that 
some of the nobility held their estates by, 
from the crown. Thus sir John Stanley had 
a grant of the isle of Man from Henry IV. 
to be held of the king, his heirs, and success- 
ors, by homage and the service ot two fal- 
cons, payable on the dav of his or their coro- 
nation.. " And Philip de Hastang held his 
manor of Combertoun, in Cambridgeshire, 
by the service of keeping the king’s falcons. 
Falconry, though an exercise now much 
disused among us, in comparison with what it 
antiently was, does yet furnish a great variety 
of significant terms, which still obtain in our 
language. Thus, the parts of a hawk have 
their proper names. The legs from the thigh 
to the foot, are called arms ; the toes the 
petty singles ; the claws the pounces. r l lie 
wings are called the sails ; the long feathers 
the beams ; the two longest, the principal 
feathers ; those next, the flags. The tail is 
called the train ; the breast-feathers the 
mails ; those behind the thigh the pendant 
feathers. When the feathers are not yet 
full-grown she is said to be unsummed ; 
when they are complete, she is summed : 
the craw, or crop, is called the gorge', 
the pipe next the fundament, where the 
faeces are drawn down, is called the pan- 
nel : the slimy substance lying in the pannel 
is called the glut : the upper and crooked 
part of the bili is called the beak ; the nether 
part, the clap ; the yellow part between the 
beak and the eyes, the scar or sere ; the two 
small holes therein, the nares. 
As to her furniture : the leathers with bells 
buttoned on her legs, are called bezvits. '1 he 
leathern thong, whereby the falconer holds 
the hawk, is called the lease or lash ; the lit- 
tle straps, by which the lease is fastened to 
the legs, jesses', and a line or packthread 
fastened to the lease, in disciplining her, a 
trainee. A cover for her head, to keep her 
in the dark, is called a hood ; a large wide 
hood, open behind, to be worn at first, is 
called a rufter-hood : to draw the strings, 
that the hood may be in readiness to be 
pulled off, is called unstriking the hood. 
The blinding a hawk just taken, by running 
4 T 
G[)7 
a thread through her eye-lids, and thus 
drawing them over the eyes, to prepare her 
for being hooded, is called seeling. A figure 
or resemblance of a fowl, made of leather 
and feathers, is called a lure. Her resting- 
place, when off the falconer’s hand, is called 
the perch. The place where her meat is laid, 
is called the hack ; and that wherein she is 
set while her feathers fall and come again, 
the mew. 
Something given a hawk to cleanse and 
purge her gorge, is called casting. Small 
feathers given her to make her cast, are 
called plumage. Gravel given her to help 
to bring down her stomach is called rungle. 
Her throwing up filth from the gorge after 
casting is called gleaming. The purging of 
her grease, Sec. enseaming. Her being 
stuffed is called gurgiting. The inserting a 
feather in her wing in lieu of a broken one is 
called imping. The giving her a leg, wing, 
or pinion of a fowl to pull at is called tiring. 
The neck of a bird the hawk preys on is 
called the inke. What the hawk leaves of 
her prey is called the pill or pelf. 
There are also proper terms used for se- 
veral actions. When she flutters with her 
wings, as if striving to get away, either from 
the perch or fist, she is said to bate. When, 
standing too near, they light with each other, 
it is called crabbing. When the young ones 
quiver, and shake their wings in obedience to 
the elder, it is called covering. When she 
wipes her beak after feeding, she is said to 
feak. W hen she sleeps, she is saici to jouk. 
From the time of exchanging her coat till 
she turn white again, is called her interview- 
ing. Treading is called cawking. When 
she stretches one of her wings after her legs, 
and then the other, it is called mantling. 
Her dung is called muting ; when she mutes 
a good way from her, she is said to slice ; 
when she does it directly down, instead of 
yerking backwards, she is said to slime ; and 
if it be in drops, it is called dropping. W hen 
she sneezes it is called suiting. W hen she 
raises and shakes herself she is said to rouze. 
When, after mantling, she crosses her wings 
together over her back, she is said to 
warble. 
When a hawk seizes she is said to bind. 
When, after seizing, she pulls off the feathers 
she is said to plume. When she raises a 
fowl aloft, and at length descends with it to 
the ground, it is called trussing. When, 
being aloft, she descends to strike her prey, 
it is called stooping. When she flies out too 
far from game she is said to rake. When, 
forsaking her proper game, she flies at pyes, 
cfows, &c. that chance to cross her, it is 
called the check. When, missing the fowl, 
she betakes herself to the next check, she is 
said to fly on head ■ The fowl or game she 
flies at is called the quarry. The dead body 
of a fowl killed by the hawk is called a pelt. 
When she flies away with the quarry she is 
said to carry. When in stooping she turns 
two or three times on the wing, to recover 
herself ere she seizes, it is called canceliering. 
When she hits the prey, yet does not truss 
it, it is called ruff. The making a hawk 
tame and gentle is called reclaiming. The 
bringing her to endure company, manning 
her. An old staunch hawk, used to fly and 
set example to a young one, is called a make- 
hawk. 
The reclaiming, manning, and bringing 
