ordinary food. It is a summer visitant to most parts of Europe, including the British Islands, and is most wantonly and needlessly destroyed by gamekeepers. A second European species of the group is the beautiful F. eleonorae, which hardly comes farther north than the countries bordering the Mediterranean, and, though in some places abundant, is an extremely local bird. The largest species of this section seems to be the Neotropical F. femoralis, for F. diroleucus though often ranked here, is now supposed to belong to the group of typical falcons. (A. N.)
FALCONE, ANIELLO (1600–1665), Italian battle-painter, was
the son of a tradesman, and was born in Naples. He showed his
artistic tendency at an early age, received some instruction from
a relative, and then studied under Ribera (Lo Spagnoletto), of
whom he ranks as the most eminent pupil. Besides battle-pictures,
large and small, taken from biblical as well as secular
history, he painted various religious subjects, which, however,
count for little in his general reputation. He became, as a battle-painter,
almost as celebrated as Borgognone (Courtois), and was
named “L’Oracolo delle Battaglie.” His works have animation,
variety, truth to nature, and careful colour. Falcone was bold,
generous, used to arms, and an excellent fencer. In the insurrection
of Masaniello (1647) he resolved to be bloodily avenged
for the death, at the hands of two Spaniards, of a nephew
and of a pupil in the school of art which he had established in
Naples. He and many of his scholars, including Salvator Rosa
and Carlo Coppola, formed an armed band named the Compagnia
della Morte (“Company of Death”; see Rosa, Salvator).
They scoured the streets by day, exulting in slaughter; at night
they were painters again, and handled the brush with impetuous
zeal. Peace being restored, they had to decamp. Falcone and
Rosa made off to Rome; here Borgognone noticed the works of
Falcone, and became his friend, and a French gentleman induced
him to go to France, where Louis XIV. became one of his patrons.
Ultimately Colbert obtained permission for the painter to return
to Naples, and there he died in 1665. Two of his battle-pieces
are to be seen in the Louvre and in the Naples museum; he
painted a portrait of Masaniello, and engraved a few plates.
Among his principal scholars, besides Rosa and Coppola (whose
works are sometimes ascribed to Falcone himself), were Domenico
Gargiuolo (named Micco Spadaro), Paolo Porpora and Andrea
di Lione.
FALCONER, HUGH (1808–1865), British palaeontologist and
botanist, descended from an old Scottish family, was born at
Forres on the 29th of February 1808. In 1826 he graduated at
Aberdeen, where he manifested a taste for the study of natural
history. He afterwards studied medicine in the university of
Edinburgh, taking the degree of M.D. in 1829; during this
period he zealously attended the botanical classes of Prof. R.
Graham (1786–1845), and those on geology by Prof. R. Jameson.
Proceeding to India in 1830 as assistant-surgeon on the Bengal
establishment of the East India Company, he made on his
arrival an examination of the fossil bones from Ava in the
possession of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and his description
of the collection, published soon afterwards, gave him a recognized
position among the scientists of India. Early in 1831 he
was appointed to the army station at Meerut, in the North-Western
Provinces, but in the same year he was asked to officiate
as superintendent of the botanic garden of Saharanpur, during
the ill-health and absence of Dr J. F. Royle; and in 1832 he
succeeded to this post. He was thus placed in a district that
proved to be rich in palaeontological remains; and he set to
work to investigate its natural history and geology. In 1834 he
published a geological description of the Siwalik hills, in the
Tertiary strata of which he had in 1831 discovered bones of
crocodiles, tortoises and other animals; and subsequently, with
conjoint labourers, he brought to light a sub-tropical fossil
fauna of unexampled extent and richness, including remains of
Mastodon, the colossal ruminant Sivatherium, and the enormous
tortoise Colossochelys Atlas. For these valuable discoveries he
and Captain (afterwards Sir Proby T.) Cautley (1802–1871)
received in 1837 the Wollaston medal in duplicate from the
Geological Society of London. In 1834 Falconer was appointed
to inquire into the fitness of India for the growth of the tea-plant,
and it was on his recommendation that it was introduced
into that country.
He was compelled by illness to leave India in 1842, and during his stay in England he occupied himself with the classification and arrangement of the Indian fossils presented to the British Museum and East India House, chiefly by himself and Sir Proby T. Cautley. He then set to work to edit the great memoir by Cautley and himself, entitled Fauna Antiqua Sivalensis, of which Part I. text was issued in 1846, and a series of 107 plates during the years 1846–1849. Unfortunately the work, owing partly to Dr Falconer’s absence from England and partly to ill-health, was never completed. He was elected F.R.S. in 1845. In 1847 he was appointed superintendent of the Calcutta botanical garden, and professor of botany in the medical college; and on entering on his duties in the following year he was at once employed by the Indian government and the Agricultural and Horticultural Society as their adviser on all matters connected with the vegetable products of India. He prepared an important report on the teak forests of Tenasserim, and this was the means of saving them from destruction by reckless felling; and through his recommendation the cultivation of the cinchona bark was introduced into the Indian empire. Being compelled by the state of his health to leave India in 1855, he spent the remainder of his life chiefly in examining fossil species in England and the Continent corresponding to those which he had discovered in India, notably the species of mastodon, elephant and rhinoceros; he also described some new mammalia from the Purbeck strata, and he reported on the bone-caves of Sicily, Gibraltar, Gower and Brixham. In the course of his researches he became interested in the question of the antiquity of the human race, and actually commenced a work on “Primeval Man,” which, however, he did not live to finish. He died on the 31st of January 1865. Shortly after his death a committee was formed for the promotion of a “Falconer Memorial.” This took the shape of a marble bust, which was placed in the rooms of the Royal Society of London, and of a Falconer scholarship of the annual value of £100, open for competition to graduates in science or medicine of the university of Edinburgh.
Dr Falconer’s botanical notes, with 450 coloured drawings of Kashmir and Indian plants, have been deposited in the library at Kew Gardens, and his Palaeontological Memoirs and Notes, comprising all his papers read before learned societies, have been edited, with a biographical sketch, by Charles Murchison, M.D. (London, 1868). Many reminiscences of Dr Falconer, and a portrait of him, were published by his niece, Grace, Lady Prestwich, in her Essays descriptive and biographical (1901).
FALCONER, WILLIAM (1732–1760), British poet, was born
in Edinburgh on the 11th of February 1732. His father was a
wig-maker, and carried on business in one of the small shops
with wooden fronts at the Netherbow Port, an antique castellated
structure which remained till 1764, dividing High Street from
the Canongate. The old man became bankrupt, then tried
business as a grocer, and finally died in extreme poverty.
William, the son, having received a scanty education, was put
to sea. He served on board a Leith merchant vessel, and in his
eighteenth year obtained the appointment of second mate of the
“Britannia,” a vessel employed in the Levant trade, and
sailed from Alexandria for Venice. The “Britannia” was overtaken
by a dreadful storm off Cape Colonna and was wrecked,
only three of the crew being saved. Falconer was happily one
of the three, and the incidents of the voyage and its disastrous
termination formed the subject of his poem of The Shipwreck
(1762). Meanwhile, on his return to England, Falconer, in his
nineteenth year, printed at Edinburgh an elegy on Frederick,
prince of Wales, and afterwards contributed short pieces to the
Gentleman’s Magazine. Some of these descriptive and lyrical
effusions possess merit. The fine naval song of “The Storm”
(“Cease, rude Boreas”), reputed to be by George Alexander
Stevens, the dramatic writer and lecturer, has been ascribed to
Falconer, but apparently on no authority. The duke of York,
to whom The Shipwreck had been dedicated, advised Falconer
