860

falconry.

labour. When thus instructed to pursue their prey, theyare sent after wild foxes and hares in the mountains, theyfollow them in hope of obtaining their usual food, sooncatch them, and bring them to their masters, as Ctesias informs us, who, instead oftheirusualflesb,give them the intes-tines of the wild ones they have caught. Mliani Hist.Animal, lib. iv. cap. 26; see also Le Pluche, in Spectacle dela Nature; see likewise Chardin ’s Travels in Persia, andalso Gemelli Carreri.

It should seem, therefore, that the first information theGreeks received of these practices were all foreign to theirown soil, coming from India and Thrace , and we may addSiberia . 1 * From what has transpired, it does not appearthis practice was introduced very early into Greece .

In Italy , however, it must have been common, for bothMartial 1S and Apuleius speak of it as a thing generallyknown. The former calls a hawk a fowler’s servant, andthe latter puns upon the word accipiter, which also impliesa rapacious kind of fish, in his Apologia, p. 296: “ Me-

*♦ ** In the province of Dauria , and near the river Amour, there are a greatmany milk-white falcons, which are sent in large numbers to Chino. The antiquityof this kind of sport among the Tartars , Kalmucs, and other people, inhabitingSiberia , appears partly in this, that they were used to have a representation of thissport painted or etched on the urns which they put into their graves.” The author hererefers to a graphic representation which he gives,—the original of which, he says, wasdug out of a tomb, not far from the city of Crasnoyahr ; “ and partly by their send'ing a tine falcon, whenever they had a mind to make an extraordinary present tosome great person. (See L'Hist . des Tartars , cap. viii. p. 205 ;) whence Mezeray’topiuion in his Hist, part i. additament, Paris, 1685, seems not to be ill-grounded,when he supposes the ancient Germans had learned this sport of the Scytks. Howcommon hawking is, even at this day, in Mingrelia and Dagestan , the above-citedwriter of the latest account of Colon and Astracan , &c. (p. 178 and 315,) willsatisfy the reader. The Tartars in Siberia make use of three sorts of falcons. Thefirst is called in their tongue, hkartschega aholphei, or ttungar, which the best andmost beautiful sort; these falcons are ash-coloured, and some speckled white, andpretty large. The second sort they call uguginala. The third toracktschin.Whichever sort they be, it is necessary to make them fit for sport whilst theyare young, which is done by these people in the following manner; after a falconhas been well fed, and is lat, they give them the bigness of a pcpper-coru of aroot they call ack-chirguk, put among some fiesb, chopped small; this root is of anemetic quality, and has its effect upon the birds : iu the next place, they take apiece of woollen felt, of the bigness of a nut, this they mince among some flesh,make a little ball of it, and make the bird eat it; this done, they cause him to becarried upou a man’s hand from uine to twelve days, to prevent his sleeping: afterwhich time, they mix some calmus among his meat, and by that liiuc he is used tothe falconer. However, before they venture him at large, they make him startand return within small compass. It is to be observed, that the Tartars neverstroke their falcons over the head and back, which they believe makes them shy.They use the same method with eagles—Von Struhlenbergs Hist.-Gcog . Descriptionof the North and North-East of Europe , <$c. p. 362.

is Fredo fait volucrum, famulus nunc aucupis; idemDecipit, et captas non sibi rnceret aves.

Martial, Epigr. lib. xiv. 216.