The
antiquity of falconry is very great. There appears to be little doubt
that it was practiced in Asia at a very remote period, for which we
have the concurrent testimony of various Chinese and Japanese
works. It appears to have been known in China some 2000 years B.C., and the
records of a king Wen Wang who reigned over a province of that country
in 689 B.C. proves that the art was at that time in very high favor. In
Japan it appears to have been known at least 600 years B.C., and
probably at an equally early date in India, Arabia, Persia and Syria.
Sir A. H. Layard, considered that in an ancient drawing found by him in the ruins of Khorsabad ‘‘there appeared to
be a falconer bearing a hawk on his wrist,’’ from which it would appear
to have been known there some 1700 years B.C. In all the above-mentioned countries of
Asia it is practiced at the present day.
Little is known of the early history of falconry in Africa, but from
very ancient Egyptian carvings and drawings it seems to have been known
there many ages ago.’ It was probably also in vogue in the countries of
Morocco, Oran, Algiers, Tunis and Egypt, at the same time as in Europe.
The older writers on falconry, English and continental, often mention
Barbary and Tunisian falcons. It is still practiced in Egypt.
Perhaps the oldest records of falconry in Europe are supplied by the
writings of Pliny, Aristotle and Martial. Although their notices of the
sport are slight and somewhat vague, they are quite sufficient to
show clearly that it was practiced in their days—between the years 384
B.C. and A.D. 40. It was probably introduced into England from the
continent about AD. 860, and from that time down to the middle of the
17th century falconry was followed with an ardor that perhaps no
English sport has ever called forth, not even fox-hunting.
Stringent
laws and enactments, notably in the reigns of William the Conqueror,
Edward III., Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, were passed from time to time in
its interest. Falcons and hawks were allotted to degrees and orders of
men according to rank and station—for instance, to the emperor the eagle
and vulture, to royalty the gyrfalcons, to an. earl the peregrine, to a
yeoman the goshawk, to a priest the sparrow-hawk, and to a knave or
servant the useless kestrel.
The writings of Shakespeare furnish ample
testimony to the high and universal estimation in ,which it was held in
his days. About the middle of the 17th century falconry began to decline
in England, to revive somewhat at the Restoration. It never, however,
completely recovered its former favor, a variety of causes operating
against it, such as enclosure of waste lands, agricultural
improvements, and the introduction of fire-arms into the sporting field,
till it fell, as a national sport, almost into oblivion. Yet it has
never been even temporarily extinct, and it is successfully practiced even at the present day.
