Falconry - With Introduction and Chapters on: The Modern Falconer, Implements Used and a Glossary of Terms

By Gerald Lascelles

This antiquarian book constitutes one volume of a detailed and useful guide to falconry, and includes information on the modern falconer, a discussion implements used, and a glossary of terms. This fascinating and extensively illustrated text will be of considerable utility to modern hawking enthusiasts, and would make for a wonderful addition to collections of related literature. Many antiquarian books such as this are becoming increasingly hard to come by and expensive, and it is with this in mind that we are republishing this book now in an affordable, modern edition. It comes complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on falconry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Mar 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781446548677

Book preview

Falconry

INTRODUCTORY—THE MODERN FALCONER—IMPLEMENTS USED—GLOSSARY OF TERMS

A work upon falconry, the most ancient of all the field sports which men follow at the present day, needs no apology for its introduction to the public, especially when, as is the case with the following chapters, it forms part of the series of volumes which deal comprehensively with all our English sports. That falconry is not better known or more commonly practised is due to the great alteration in the character of the country since the days when it was the pursuit chiefest in the estimation of the sporting public. The almost universal enclosure of the land, accompanied in many cases by the planting of hedgerow timber, the introduction of the art of shooting flying, which at once supplanted hawking as a means of providing game for the table, the adoption of the system of forming plantations which came so much into vogue about one hundred and fifty years ago—all these things contributed to make falconry less possible and therefore less popular than it had been up to the time of the Commonwealth, when men’s minds were occupied with greater concerns than those of sport, and when falconry, the chief amusement of the upper classes, received its rudest shock. So now in the present day the parts of the country where hawking can be successfully carried on are comparatively few and far between, and though there are a goodly band of devotees to the sport (and there is no pursuit with the love of which its votaries become more deeply imbued), yet it is not possible for them to respond to the innumerable invitations which they receive to show their friends something of their favourite diversion, because the country where their host would seek to fix the venue is not merely bad, but impossible for the sport.