The village of Falconswaerd, near Bois le Duc, in Holland, has for many years furnished falconers to the rest of Europe. I have known many falconers in England, and in the service of different princes on the Continent, but I never met with one of them who was not a native of Falconswaerd.
It has been the practice of these sober and industrious men to stay with their employers during the season for hawking, and to pass the remainder of the year with their families at home.
A falconer, whose province it was to tame, manage, and look after falcons and other hawks, was formerly as great and conspicuous a character as the most celebrated huntsman of the present day. The influence of fashion and the changes wrought by time have, however, so obscured both sport and sportsmen in this way, that neither hawk, falcon, or falconer, are to be seen or heard of, unless in the northern parts of the kingdom, where it is also nearly buried in oblivion.—Sebright—Daniel.
Falconry, s. Vide Hawking.
Fallow, a. Pale red, or pale yellow; unsowed, left to rest after the years of tillage; ploughed, but not sowed; unploughed, uncultivated.
Fallow Deer, s. The domestic or park deer.
No two animals can make a more near approach to each other than the stag and the fallow deer, and yet no two animals keep more distinct, or avoid each other with more fixed animosity; they never herd or intermix together, and consequently never give rise to an intermediate race. It is even rare, unless they have been transported thither, to find fallow-deer in a country where stags are numerous.
The fallow-deer is easily tamed, and feeds upon many things which the stag refuses; he also preserves his venison better: nor does it appear that the rutting, followed by a long and severe winter, exhausts him, but he continues nearly in the same state throughout the year. He browses closer than the stag, for which reason he is more prejudicial to young trees, and often strips them too close for recovery. The young deer eat faster and with more avidity than the old. At the second year they seek the female, and, like the stag, are fond of variety. The doe goes with young eight months and some days; she commonly produces one fawn, sometimes two, but very rarely three. They are capable of engendering, from the age of two years to that of fifteen or sixteen; and in short they resemble the stag in all his natural habits, and the greatest difference between them is the duration of their lives. From the testimony of hunters it has been remarked, that stags live to the age of thirty-five or forty years, and from the same authority we understand that the fallow-deer does not live more than twenty. As they are smaller than the stag, it is probable that their growth is sooner completed.