428 
THE LIVING WORLD. 
always remain closed and senseless. Finally the enthusiasm spread to the whole 
court, and resulted in a French crusade, which nearly proved successful. Nor 
was this all, for the fact that the English nobility hunted on French soil proved 
a stronger motive than loyalty to the French nobility, and induced them to 
lend support to their king, which would have been rendered to no weaker 
appeal than that of their passion for hunting with the falcon. 
Falconing was cultivated as early as the fourth century, and continued in 
Germany till the end of the eighteenth century, while it is* still in repute in 
Persia. Great sums were lavished upon falconries, and the chief falconer ranked 
fourth from the king. Francis I. of France expended forty thousand florins 
CHICKEN HAWK {Aslua palumbarius). speckeed buz- kingey miean (Milvus regalis). wandering faecon 
zard (Buteo lagopus\. {Falco peregrinus). 
a year, paying his chief falconer a salary of four thousand florins and giving 
him as assistants fifty gentlemen and fifty falconers. Noblemen and their 
stately dames devoted much time to hunting with falcons , and even when not 
caring to engage in the sport still kept their falcons by them as a symbol 
of wealth and station. Just as with archery, the terms of falconry formed a 
vocabulary by themselves, and the historians of the times are filled with allu¬ 
sions to the sport. 
Falconry is cultivated ardently by Cossack and Kalmuck, who have inherited 
love for the sport even though they disregard many of the more stately cere¬ 
monies of the nobles who provoked from Froissart his high-wrought descrip¬ 
tions of “The Field of the Cloth of Gold.” 
