Falconry in the British Isles.

London: John Van Voorst,, 1855. Inscribed to the father of modern taxidermy First edition, presentation copy, inscribed on the front free endpaper: "To John Hancock. Presented by the Authors". Hancock owned the Saker and Norwegian falcons depicted in this striking work, which is considered "the best English book on falconry, and a very attractive publication" (Schwerdt). "Salvin's early love of hawking was stimulated by an acquaintance with John Tong, a one-time assistant falconer to Colonel Thomas Thornton. In the manner of Thornton, he made a highly successful hawking tour of northern England in 1843 with John Pells (then in the pension of the hereditary grand falconer of England)" (ODNB). When serving with his regiment in Ireland in 1855, Salvin used to fly peregrine falcons at rooks and tiercels at magpies. His lifetime of devotion to the sport led his fellow falconer C. H. Fisher to call him "the father of the craft in England". This is Salvin's first book, written in collaboration with William Brodrick (1814-1888), who himself had a remarkable collection of working birds. Brodrick had "most, if not all, of the hawks and falcons usually employed in modern falconry. Under his care, examples of the Greenland, Iceland, and Norwegian gerfalcons, sakers, and lanners lived for years, a source of admiration to all who saw them" (Fisher). Brodrick's most significant contribution to the book was the "capital illustrations, all drawn by him from the life. The figures of hawks are in their way inimitable, and bear comparison with the best work of his friend and only rival in the same line, the accomplished animal painter Joseph Wolf". The stones for the plates were destroyed after publication, so they had to be redrawn for the second edition (1873). The plates in the first edition are celebrated as "much superior" (Harting). Provenance: the recipient was the British taxidermist and ornithologist John Hancock (1808-1890). He is mentioned numerous times in this work, twice attributed as supplying falcons as models. The Zoologist described him as a friend of Brodrick and noted that, "there is but one man in England, Mr Hancock, who can stuff a hawk properly" (p. 76). One of Hancock's most famous taxidermy pieces is "Struggle with the quarry", an extraordinary tablaeu of a falcon attacking a heron (now on show at the Hancock Museum), exhibited at the Great Exhibition in 1851. Hancock was one of the original members of the Tyneside Naturalists' Field Club, founded in 1846, and vice-president of the Natural History Society of Northumberland. This handsome book also has the Bewick bookplate of Dr John Cresswell of Rothbury House, Heaton, near Newcastle, a keen collector of the artist. Quarto. Publisher's green cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt, illustration of stooping Barbary Falcon gilt on front cover and in blind on back cover, light yellow surface-paper endpapers, edges uncut. With 24 hand-coloured lithograph plates heightened with gum arabic, by Brodrick, printed by Ford & West; 4 pp. of publisher's advertisements at end. Sometime neatly rebacked with the original spine laid down, tips restored, spine and edges sunned with a few marks, cloth mottled and variably faded, repaired marginal tear to plate XII (not affecting image). A very good copy. Harting 67; Mullens and Swann P.504; Nissen, IVB 147; Souhart 419; Schwerdt II, p. 145; Wood p. 541; not in Thiebaud. Charles Hawkins Fisher, Reminiscences of a Falconer, 1901; F. S. Dugmore, "The Revival of Falconry", The Zoologist, vol. 2, 1878, pp. 73-84.