travels. I t lias very probably occurred on the continent of
Europe, but, owing to the way in which it has been confounded
with the cognate forms, the point cannot at present
be decided. The same confusion renders useless many of
the records of the appearance of large Falcons in the United
Kingdom ; but the following seem trustworthy as referring to
the subject of this article.
The young bird from which the figure here given was taken,
was shot in Pembrokeshire in a warren belonging to Lord
Cawdor, and by him presented to the Zoological Society,
whence it passed to the British Museum, where it now is.
I t had been observed, says Mr. Tracey (Zoologist, p. 2689),
by his father for eight or ten days before it was killed. A
specimen taken at Port Eliot, in Cornwall, and now in the
collection of Mr. Rocld, as stated in the second edition
of his ‘ List of British Birds ’ (but said by Mr. Brooking
Rowe to be the example whose occurrence 011 the Lynher,. in
February, 1884, was mentioned by Dr. Edward Moore) is
believed by Mr. Rodd to be of this form, as is probably one
obtained at the Lizard, and also recorded by him. Hunt,
in his ‘ British Ornithology,’ has figured an example taken
alive on Bungay Common in Suffolk, some sixty years since,
but from its tameness it had possibly escaped from a falconer.
In Norfolk one was killed, according to Mr. Stevenson, in
February, 1848, near Cromer, and other large white Falcons
have been seen in that county, as well as in Suffolk.
In Yorkshire, there is Mr. Hancock’s excellent authority for
the occurrence of one, which was wounded near York in
February, 1837, and kept alive for some time by Mr. Allis;
and Mr. Roberts has recorded (Zool., p. 4568) one which was
killed in Robin Hood’s Bay, in November, 1854. A young
male killed in Islay, in February, 1838, has come under Mr.
Hancock’s inspection, but at least four are mentioned by Mr.
Robert Gray, in his -work, as having been killed of late years
in the Hebrides; while two more have, on the same authority,
occurred in other parts of Scotland-—one in Lanarkshire in
1835, and the other, an immature male, now in Mr. New-
come’s collection, in Perthshire in the spring of 1862. The
example described and figured in Pennant’s ‘ British
Zoology,’ was said to have been shot near Aberdeen, and
the engraving shows it to have been a young bird. Messrs.
F. H. Salvin and Brodrick, in their work before cited, also
state that on two occasions, about 1840, a large white Falcon
was seen in Ross-shire, and that in 1850 Messrs. St. John
and Hancock saw a Greenland Falcon near Elgin. On the
3rd of March, 1866, according to Dr. Saxby (Zool.s.s.
p. 288), a female was shot on Balta, one of the Shetlands, and
this example is now in the collection of Mr. J . H. Gurney,
Junior. In Ireland, Thompson mentions one killed more than
thirty years since in Donegal, and subsequently a second,
shot at Drumboe Castle in the same county. Mr. Blake-
Knox has recorded a third Irish specimen, which is in the
Museum of the Dublin Natural History Society, and appears
to have been killed in the winter of 1862-3.
Little is known of the nidification of this Falcon, but it
probably does not differ much iu this respect from the bird
next to be described. Holboll, who was for some years
Governor of the Danish settlements in Greenland, states
that lie never saw but one breeding pair of white Falcons,
and the only large Falcon’s nest he took evidently belonged
to the Iceland form, or, at any rate, to that race of it which
inhabits South Greenland. Three eggs obtained through
him, however, and marked as those of the white bird, are in
the collection formed by' the late Mr. Wolley, and measure
from 2-27 to 2-12 by 1-83 to P75 in. They are suffused
with pale reddish-orange, having a few spots of a darker
orange-brown or dull red, or are mottled with pale brownish-
orange on a white ground.
So much has been written concerning Falconry, that it
need not be dwelt upon here at any length. No birds were
more eagerly sought and more highly prized by the followers
of that now nearly obsolete sport than the Greenland Falcons
captured in Iceland, and sent thence to the potentates of
Norway and Denmark. The preference accorded to these
white birds is of very ancient date, for Professor Schlegel,
in his ‘ Traité de Fauconnerie,’—at once the most learned