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 seal[561] and sea-wolf[562]. Astruc[563] 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 Vossius[564], 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 Collenuccio[565] says that this was the common report, and Radevicus[566] 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 fowling[567]; 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 them[568]. Albertus Magnus has inserted a great deal from the work of this emperor in his book upon animals.