Page:Vermin killer (1).pdf/22

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22

secret to hinder pigeons from quitting a pigeon house.

Take the head and feet of a gelt goat, and boil them together till the flesh separates from the bone; take this flesh and boil it again in the same liquor, till the whole is consumed; bruise into this decoction, which is very thick, some potters earth, out of which you are to take all the stones; vetch, dung, hemp, food, and corn; the whole must be kneaded together, and reduced to a paste or dough, which form into small loaves about the thickness of two fists, and dry them in the sun or oven, and take care it do not burn; when they are baked, lay them in several parts of the pigeon-house, and as soon as they are set there the pigeons will amuse themselves with pecking them, and finding some taste therein, which pleases them, they will keep so close to it, that they will not afterwards leave it but with regret. Others take a handful of salt which they candy, and afterwards put into the pigeon-house.

BIRDS.

Get white orpiment, barley, wheat, or any other grain that birds love, boil them together, and throw where birds come, and you may catch them presently, yet not the worse to eat.

to keep birds from fruit.

Hang a bundle of garlick on a branch of a tree, or ay it on your corn stalks, and they will not touch your fruit. Some smear their tree branches with juice of garlick.

to catch birds.

Get such seed as fowls love, mix it with grated onion, of juice of onion, and it makes them drunk.

to take wild geese.

Take a tame duck or goose, with a string by the leg,