Note 804 — Chapter LXIX · MISCELLANEOUS NOTES

“If you desire to take House doves, Stock doves, Rooks, Choughs, or any other Birds, then take Wheat, Barley, Fetches, Tares, or other Grain, and boil them very well with good store of Nux Vomica, in ordinary running water. When they are almost boiled, dry and ready to burst, take them off the Fire and set them by till they be thoroughly cold. Having so done scatter this grain in the Haunts of those Birds you have a mind to take; and as soon as they have tasted thereof, they will fall down in a dead sound, and shall not be able to recover themselves in a good while. And as you take these Great Land-fowl with this Drunken Device, so you shall take the middle and smaller Sort of Birds, if you observe to boil with what Food they delight in, a quantity of this Nux Vomica.” Further on, the same writer says that “Lees of Wine,” can be substituted for Nux Vomica, and also that the grain may be steeped in the “Juice of Hemlock, adding thereto some Henbane seed or poppy seed, causing them to be infused therein four or five days.” “How to recover a fowl thus entranced:—If you would restore these entranced Fowl to their former Health, take a quantity of Sallet-oyle, according to the strength and Bigness of the Fowl and drop it down the throat of the Fowl; then chafe the Head with a little strong White-wine-vinegar, and the Fowl will presently recover and be as well as ever.”—From the Gentleman’s Recreation, by Richard Blome.