Note 544 — FALCONRY.

This author, Blondus or Biondo, describing an Italian village, says, “I shall embrace this opportunity of mentioning a new circumstance, which is, that fowling with that rapacious bird the falcon, a diversion much followed at Arno, by the celebrated Alphonsus king of Arragon, was entirely unknown about two hundred years ago; for though Servius, the grammarian, says that Capua received that name from the augury of a falcon, because the Hetruscans, when founding it, saw one of these birds, which in their language was called capis; yet he does not tell us of what use they were to mankind. Besides, Pliny, who gives the names of many rapacious birds of the hawk kind (‘accipitres scilicet majores et minores achilvones, quos aliqui falcones fuisse volunt’), says nothing of their being employed to catch game; and, without doubt, had fowling in this manner been practised in the time of Virgil, he would have made Æneas and Dido carry such birds along with them when they went out a hunting, whereas he says only,

I will venture therefore to affirm, that two hundred years ago, as I have already said, no nation or people were accustomed to catch either land- or water-fowls with any rapacious bird tamed for that purpose.” I shall here observe, that Biondo must have had a faulty copy of Pliny; for the word achilvones is not to be found in that author, who, nevertheless, mentions the practice of fowling with birds of prey.