[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 and bushes with poles, and put the birds to flight; the hawks fly after them, by which means they are so frightened that they fall to the ground, where the men strike them with their poles and kill them.”--Histor. Animal. lib. ix. c. 6.