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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
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CHAP. LVI.
THE PLAIN BEYOND CARACORON 2 73
great flights. " On plains of grass and sandy deserts," says Gould
(Birds of Great Britain, Part IV.), " at one season covered with snow, and at another sun-burnt and parched by drought, it finds a congenial home ; in these inhospitable and little-known regions it breeds, and when necessity compels it to do so, wings its way . . . . over incredible distances to obtain water or food." Huc says, speaking of the bird on the northern frontier of China : " They generally arrive in great flights from the north, especially when much snow has fallen, flying with astonishing rapidity, so that the movement of their wings produces a noise like hail." It is said to be very delicate eating. The bird owes its place in Gould's Birds of Great Britain to the fact—strongly illustrative of its being moult volant, as Polo says it is—that it appeared in England in 1859, and since then, at least up to 1863, continued to arrive annually in pairs or companies in nearly all parts of our island, from Penzance to Caithness. And Gould states that it was breeding in the Danish islands. A full account by Mr. A. Newton of this remarkable immigration is contained in the Ibis for April, 1864, and many details in Stevenson's Birds of Norfolk, I. 376 seqq.
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There are plates of Syrrhaptes in Radde's Reisen im Süden von Ost-Sibirien, Bd. II. ; in vol. v. of Telnnainck, Planches Coloriées, Pl. 95 ; in Gould, as above ; in Gray, Genera of Birds, vol. iii. p. 517 (life size) ; and in the Ibis for April, 1860. From the last our cut is taken.
[See A. David et Oustalet, Oiseaux de la Chine, 389, on Syrrhaptes Pallasii or Syrrhaptes Paradoxus. —H. C.]
NOTE 4.—Gerfalcons (Shonkár) were objects of high estimation in the Middle Ages, and were frequent presents to and from royal personages. Thus among the presents sent with an embassy from King James II. of Aragon to the Sultan of Egypt, in 1314, we find three white gerfalcons. They were sent in homage to Chinghiz and to Kúblái, by the Kirghiz, but I cannot identify the mountains where they or the Peregrines were found. The Peregrine falcon was in Europe sometimes termed Faucon Tartare. (See Ménage s. v. Sahin.) The Peregrine of Northern Japan, and probably therefore that of Siberia, is identical with that of Europe. Witsen speaks of an island in the Sea of Tartary, from which falcons were got, apparently referring to a Chinese map as his authority ; but I know nothing more of it. (Capmany, IV. 64-65 ; Ibis, 1862, p. 314 ; Witsen, II. 656.)
[On the Falco peregrinus, Lin., and other Falcons, see Ed. Blanc's paper mentioned on p. 162. The Falco Saker is to be found all over Central Asia ; it is called by the Pekingese Hwang yag (yellow falcon). (David et Oustalet, Oiseaux de la Chine,
31-32.)—H. C.]
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Syrrhaptes Pallasii.
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