A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins. Johann Beckmann

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ cruel sports, though often forbidden by the church. Such prohibitions were issued by the council of Agda in the year 506; by that of Epaon in 517; by that of Macon in 585, and perhaps oftener, but never with much effect.

Before I proceed further, I shall make two remarks. First, that Pietro Crescentio gives one Daucus as the inventor of the art of taming hawks, but without proof, or even probability. Secondly, that the ancients bred up to hunting and fishing several rapacious animals which at present are not used for that purpose, such as the seal561 and sea-wolf562. Astruc563 has endeavoured to confute this idea; but his reasoning appears to me to have little weight; and I agree in opinion with Rondeletius and Isaac Vossius564, that seals might be instructed to catch fish; I myself have seen some, that, when commanded by their master, exhibited a variety of movements and tricks which undoubtedly prove their aptness to learn.

The art of falconry seems to have been carried to the greatest perfection, and to have been much in vogue at the principal courts of Europe in the twelfth century. Some on that account have ascribed the invention of it to the emperor Frederic I., and others to Frederic II. Frederic I., called Barbarossa, was the first who brought falcons to Italy; at least Pandolfo Collenuccio565 says that this was the common report, and Radevicus566 seems to confirm it; but I do not know from what authority Pancirollus tells us that that emperor invented falconry at the time when he was besieging Rome. Rainaldo, marquis of Este, was the first among the Italian princes who used this method of fowling567; and that the emperor Henry followed the example of his father, seems proved by the words of Collenuccio. The service rendered by Frederic II. to this art, if it can be said to deserve service, is shown by the book which he wrote in Latin on it, entitled De Arte Venandi cum Avibus, and which was printed for the first time at Augsburg in the year 1596, from a manuscript belonging to Joachim Camerarius, a physician of Nuremberg. It has here and there deficiencies, because the manuscript was torn, and some additions by the author’s son Manfred, king of Sicily. In the second book, there is an account of the use and manner of making hoods, called capellæ, which we are there told were invented by the Arabs. The emperor received as a present some hooded falcons from Arabian princes, and procured people from Arabia who understood the management of them568. Albertus Magnus has inserted a great deal from the work of this emperor in his book upon animals.

In none of the sports of the field have the fair sex partaken so much as in falconry. The ladies formerly kept hawks, in which they greatly delighted, and which were as much fondled by those who wished to gain their favour as lap-dogs are at present569. What tended principally, however, to bring it into disuse, was the invention of gunpowder. After that, hawks were discarded, and the whole enjoyment of fowling was confined to shooting. Less skill and labour were indeed required in this new exercise; but the ladies abandoned the pleasures of the chase, because they disapproved of the use of fire-arms, which were attended both with alarm and danger.

Among the oldest writers on falconry, we may reckon Demetrius, who about the year 1270 was physician to the emperor Michael Palæologus. His book, written in Greek, was first printed at Paris in 1612, by Nicholas Rigaltius, from a manuscript in the king’s library, and with the Latin translation of Peter Gyllius570. Some other works on the same subject, the antiquity of which is unknown, were printed at the same time. One in the Catalonian dialect has the forged title of Epistola Aquilæ, Symmachi et Theodotionis ad Ptolemæum regem Ægypti de re accipitraria. All these writings treat chiefly on the rearing and diseases of hawks; and contain cures, which, though some of them perhaps may be good enough, would not undoubtedly be all approved by any person of skill at present571. Aloes, to the size of about a bean, are ordered as a purge; and quicksilver is prescribed for the itch and outbreaking. We are told also, that a wild and untractable falcon was confined some time with a hood on in a smith’s shop, where it was soon tamed by the continual thumping of the hammers. One precept in Demetrius respecting the art of falconry seems very ill-suited to the practice of modern times. He desires sportsmen to say their prayers before they go out to the field. Had this custom been continued to the present day, many great men would be like the people mentioned by a certain traveller, who solicit the assistance of God when they are preparing for a piratical expedition572; but with this difference, that these rovers plunder only strange ships, whereas the latter destroy the property and possessions of their own subjects.

      FOOTNOTES

544 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,

      ‘Massylique ruunt equites et odora canum vis.’

      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.

545 Valla, the most learned man of the century in which he lived, contradicts Antonius Renaudensis, who says, Nola is a hawk’s bell. “If Nola,” says Valla, “be an old word, it cannot signify that bell now worn by hawks, because the ancients never tamed these birds for catching game, as we do, nor ornamented them with bells. If it be a new word, let him produce the author from whom it is taken.”—Laurentii Vallæ Opera. Basiliæ, 1543, fol. p. 433.

546 In the preface to Scriptores Rei Accipitrariæ.

547 Gyraldi Dialogismi, in Op. Lugd. 1696, fol. ii. p. 870.

548 Those who are desirous of being acquainted with the art of falconry, may consult Pluche, Spectacle de la Nature, vol. i., or the article Fauconnerie, in the French Encyclopédie.

549 See Herodotus.

550 “In that part of Thrace, called formerly Cedropolis, the men go out into the marshes in quest of birds, accompanied by falcons. The men beat the trees СКАЧАТЬ