# Vermin killer

THE
VERMIN KILLER;
being
A COMPLETE AND NECESSARY
FAMILY BOOK:
Shewing a Ready Way to Destroy
Adders, Badgers, Bugs, Birds of all sorts, Caterpillars, Earwigs, Fish, Fleas, Flies, Foxes, Frogs, Gnats, Lice, Mice, Moths, Moles, Otters, Pismires, Polecats, Rats, Scorpions, Snails, Snakes, Spiders, Toads, Wasps, Weasels, Worms in Gardens, &c.
GLASGOW: PRINTED FOR THE BOOKSELLERS.
THE
VERMIN KILLER.
to prevent bugs breeding.
Bugs are not only become troublesome at London, ⟨but⟩ are got into some Countries; and whereas, people think they are bred of hogs, hair, wood, wool, cloth, and fur, these things breed only lice, moths, and worms; but bugs proceed from old feather beds, whereon has long laid sick and sweaty prople, which produces putrified smells and vapours; so does close press beds that have not the advantage of the pure air; as also close rooms, where the air wants free egress and regress, from these catises bugs proceed; and also cousumptions, weakness of the back, and such like diseases that people little think of. And if you observe, you shall never find these creatures in shops, or where no beds are, or have been put. One way, therefore, to prevent them, is to wash your rooms, and keep them very clean, and keep your windows open in the day time, that the air may come in, and in a morning lay open your bed-clothes that the air may come in, and sun suck up the moisture contracted in the night time, this is a great preservative against all vermin, as also of your health.
how to destroy house bugs.
1st. Take gunpowder beat shall, and lay some about the crevices of your bedstead, and fire it with a match about your bedsteads, and keep the smoke in; this do for an hour or more, and let the room be kept close for some ⟨hours⟩ after. Or take sprigs of fern, and lay upon the ⟨boards⟩, kills them.
​2d. Take a handful of wormwood and white hellebore; boil them in urine till it is half wasted, and wash the joints of your beadsteads with it.
3d. Burn brimstone under the joints of the beadstead and creases where they lie, and they'll come out presently, that may kill them; do this two or three times a week, and keep the room close.
4th. Take strong vinegar, and mix salt with it; then sprinkle your room. This prevents bugs and fleas, and is very wholesome in houses, or at sea; so is rue, wormwood and rosemary wholesome to smell to, or vinegar sprinkled alone.
5th. Take wormwood and mustard seed, bruise and boil them in water, a quarter of an hour, then add salt to the water, and wash your floor and bedstead therewith; it will destroy them and all other vermin.
6th. Get a trap about a yard and a half long, or more, if your bed is broad, and about half a yard in depth; put it at the head of your bed to the bottom of the pillow, and in the morning they will creep into it; take it into your yard, knock it, and they will drop out, so you may kill them. They are made of wickers, by basket-makers.
To conclude, let your rooms be kept clean, set open the windows when you rise, and lay your bed-clothes open four or five hours, this is the most effectual way ⟨to⟩ prevent both bugs and fleas.
LICE.
1st. Take butter unsalted, and boil it up with ⟨pepper⟩ to a salve; then cut off the hair, and anoint the head and put on a cap.
2d. Take staves-acre powdered, and mix it ⟨among⟩ the hair, then tie it with a cap, and it kills them. ⟨Or⟩ oil and staves-acre.
3d. Take aramanths (apothecaries sell it), boil it ⟨in⟩ lye, and wash the head: or take olibanum and as ⟨much⟩ swine's grease, boil them together, and anoint ⟨children's⟩ heads; it kills lice.
nits and lice in the head.
Take of bees wax an ounee, three ounces of olive oil, three drams of staves aere; of these make a salve, and anoint; it kills both nits and lice.
Take red orpiment and saltpetre, each a dram, louse herb two drams, mix them together with oil and vinegar, so anoint the head. Byrus.
to kill lice on trees.
Through drought many trees and bushes become ⟨lousy⟩, as sweetbriar, gooseberries, &c. therefore frequently wash them, or dashing them with water may prove the best remedy.
for crab lice.
Wash with the decoction of penny royal; or boil marjoram in water, and wash with it; or the juice of stinking gladon.
for lice in the eyelids.
Rub your eyelids with salt water, or brimstone and water, or with vinegar of squils, alum and aloes.
TO KILL FLEAS.
1st. Take lavender and wormwood, and boil them in vinegar well, and sprinkle your blankets with it; or savoury laid in your ehambers kills them.
2d. Take unslacked lime and strew in your chambers: penny royal wrapt up in a eloth and laid in your bed, drives fleas away; lay fresh onee a week.
3d. Mustard seed boiled in water, and the room sprinkled with it. Arsmart (the hot sort) strewed in a chamber kills all the fleas.
4th. Soap lees and onions boiled together and sprinkled in the room, kills both them and bugs.
5th. Marsh fleabane spread in your room, or burnt, drives away fleas and gnats. Culpepper says, that elder leaves gathered with dew on them, and laid in a ​chamber, gathers all the fleas thereinto, which you may kill or throw out of the window.
6th. Rub a small piece of board over with hogs grease, and all the fleas will gather to it in the middle of the room.
to kill fleas and wall lice.
Take the decoction of thistle and arsmart or coloquintida, bramble, or colewort leaves, and sprinkle about the house, drives them away, or anoint a stick with the grease of a hedge-hog, and lay it in the room, and the fleas will gather and stick to it.
TO KILL RATS AND MICE.
1st. Take ratsbane, powder it, and mix it with fresh butter, or make it into a paste with barley or wheat-meal and honey, and lay on trenchers or boards where they come: they will eat it, and it makes them drink till they burst. It is a strong poison, therefore be very careful in using it, and wash your hands after it. Or unslacked lime and oatmeal mixed, and laid on boards where they come, kills them.
2d. Take oatmeal and powdered glass only, or mix them with fresh butter, and lay where they come. Or filings of iron mixed with oatmeal, or with dough or oatmeal flour, and lay where they do come.
3d. Black hellebore and the seed of wild cucumber mixed with such food as they eat, kills them.—Or mix powdered hellebore with wheat or barley-meal only, make into a stiff paste with honey, and laid where they come, they eat it, it is present death; but great care must be taken, lest any thing they eat should be poisoned.
4th. Take honey or mead, and make a stiff paste with wheat or barley-meal; then mix the filings of iron or steel with it, and throw it where they come, they will eat it, and it kills them.
5th. Chips of cork fried in suet, and laid where they come, kills them.
to kill field rats and mice.
In the dog days the fields are generally bare; then find out their holes or nests, which are little and round, like an augurhole, and put hemlock seed thereinto, or hellebore mixed with barley; they eat it greedily, so it kills them.
to drive away bats or rear mice.
The smoke of ivy burned does.
TO DESTROY MOLES.
1st. Take a head or two of garlick, onion, or leek, and put it into their holes, and they will run out as if amazed, and so you may with a spear or dog take them.
2d. Beat hellebore, white or black, and with wheat flour, the white of an egg, milk and sweet wine or metheglin, make it into paste, and put small pellets as big as a small nut into their holes, and they eat it with pleasure, and it kills them.
3d. Take the bark of dogs cole, powder it, and mix it with wheat flour, or barley meal, or rye flour, and with milk and wine make a paste, put some of these pellets into their holes, and they will eat it, and it kills them.
4th. Take marking stone and wild cucumber juice, and pour it into their holes. Some set traps at the mouth of their holes.
5th. In places you would not dig nor break much, the fuming their holes with bristone, garlick, or other unsavoury things, drives them away, and if you put a dead mole into a common haunt, it will make them absolutely forsake it.
to take moles when you plough.
1st. Take with you a large vessel full of water, and when you see any new mole holes cast up, being opened with the plough, pour therein pitchers or large cans of water, and that will make them in a little time come ​out, and thus, you may destroy them in ploughed land or pasture; in common land make trenches in spring time to catch them.
2d'. Some say that in gendering time, if you lead or draw a bitch mole in a string along the ground, the buck will trace her, and so you may catch them in a pot set in the ground.
TO DESTROY WEASELS.
Take sal armoniac, and beat it, and with wheat flour and honey, make it into a paste, with the white of an egg, and lay it in pellets where they come, and they eat it, and it kills them.
weasels to fright away mice.
Put bells about his neck, and let him run about your house, and he'll frighten away all the mice. 'Tis their nature to destroy mice, therefore some people love to have them about their houses.
TO DESTROY CATERPILLARS OF MANY KINDS.
1st. Caterpillars destroy the leaves of trees, and devour cabbages and other tillage, and are generally the effects of great droughts. To prevent their numerous increase on trees, gather them off in winter, taking the prickets away that cleave to the branches, and burn them.
2d. When they are upon coleworts or cabbages, take some salt water and water them with it, and it will kill them.
3d. Our gardeners shake them off the plants in a morning betimes, for whilst they are touched with the cold of the night, they easily drop down
4th. The most hurtful is the wolf and calender worm, that lurk in the heart of flower buds, shutting them up that they cannot open, which they cousume; the trees that blow early, look as if singed by lightning; those that blow late are not so subject to this evil.
​5th. Take three ounces of wormwood, one ounce of assa fœtida, steep and break them, and boil with four pails of water in the air, because they are stinking smells, and when boiled, strain out the ingredients through a linen cloth, and use it when cold at pleasure, before the bud be opened, and they will do no harm to the tree; you may also add other ingredients, as tobacco stalks, wild vines, colloquintida, or the like, and expect very good issue.
to destroy green bugs, that hurt green plants and rose trees.
To kill green bugs in gardens, sprinkle the places where they fix with strong vinegar, mixed with the juice of henbane; or some water the plants haunted by them with the cold decoction of mustard and laurel seed in water; some quash them with their fingers, which is a good way; or fleabane boiled in water and sprinkled, kills them.
to destroy vine fretters in gardens, &c.
Stick a rod half a foot high in the ground, with mugs or cups turned over the top of it, and you will find that they will creep under there for shelter, so you may easily kill them.
an universal remedy against all animals offensive to flowers.
Democritus says, put eight or nine crabs in an earthen pot with water, and let them stand eight days in the open air, then take of this water, and water your plants in their infancy; repeat the same once in eight days, and you will find it effectual against all sorts of vermin.
to gather frogs and kill them.
Take a sheep, ox, or goat's gaul, and bruise it by the water side, and the frogs will gather to it.
to prevent frogs croaking.
Set a lanthorn and candle upon the side of the water or river that waters your garden, it is done. Toads will not come near sage if rue is planted about it.
TO DRIVE SNAKES AND ADDERS FROM THE GARDEN.
1st. Wormwood planted in divers places, they will not come near it.
2d. Smoke the places with hartshorn, or lily roots, burning in a fire pan, and they will fly from the place.
3d. The roots of centaury laid about your ground, will make them depart; or lay deer suet about the place, and they will be gone.
for a bite or sting of a snake or adder.
Take the juice of ash tree leaves squeezed into good white wine or beer, and drink it, and wash with it, then cover the place stung with ash tree leaves, and it cures you, says Agrippa.
snakes, adders, and blue worms, &c.
In April or May, lay fresh dung in places where they come, and they will resort to it. In July or August turn up the dunghill, and you will both find their eggs and many of them, which destroy: do this two or three times in a summer.
PISMIRES, EARWIGS, AND OTHER VERMIN THAT HURT GARDENS.
In gardens are July-flowers, which are subject to harm, both by rain and the sun, and much watering, and from earwigs and pismires. The rain spots them; the sun withers them by drying the ground too much: strong water spoils them, especially at the last of their blowing; pismires gnaw the flowers, and make holes in ​the leaves; earwigs devour the flowers, at least the leaves, that they fall out of the shell; to preserve them, let the sun be upon them but one hour in the day, and they will last long.
pismires and other vermin about orange trees and july-flowers.
1st. Put here and there a glass, with water and honey in it, wherein they will drown themselves; six or seven will go a great way.
2d. The smoke of the root of wild cucumber drives them away.
3d. Muscle shells burnt with storax, and beat to powder, strew the garden where they are, and they will all come out of their holes—then kill them.
4th In winter dig the hills, and take out the core, that it may be lower than the surface of the earth, that when you lay your turf down, it may lie lower than the other ground; it prevents ants returning, and the rain and frost coming, kills the rest.
to preserve plants from pismires.
Take the dregs of oil, and mix it with lupins, and anoint the bottom of the plants therewith.
to drive away pismires.
Take brimstone and powder it, then let it stand till it hath coloured the water, then sprinkle the water on the banks.
EARTH AND FIELD MICE, SNAILS, AND OTHER VERMIN THAT HURT TULIPS.
1st. To preserve tulips from vermin, cover them with wooden frames four inches high, and do them over so close with iron wires, that none of these vermin can get through to hurt them.
2d. Set tiles, bricks, or boards hollow against the wall, pales, &c. and they will creep under them for ​shelter; abont Michaelnas they get to such places for security the whole winter, except you prevent it by destroying them in December, which is the easiest, best, and surest way to destroy them.
TO KILL FLIES.
Treacle and water put into an earthen dish pretty thick with treacle or honey, they will light in it and stick till dead. Or, dregs of sugar and water mixed, they will come to it and be drowned.
that flies may not trouble cattle.
Boil bay berries in oil, and anoint them with it, and they will never sit on cattle; or, wet the hair of horses with the juice of the leaves of gourds at Midsummer, and they will not molest them. If cattle are anointed with the juice of arsmart, flies will not come near them, though it is the heat of summer.
to drive out flies, spiders, scorpions, &c.
Burn a hoop's feathers in the room, and make a smoke, then these insects that smell the smell will be gone, and come no more.
TO PREVENT MOTHS EATING CLOTHES
1st. Take beaten pepper, lay it among your clothes, airing them well first, and it will prevent them.
2d. Pieces of Russia leather put in boxes, prevents moths and all other vermin.
to destroy moths.
About August they appear, and that mostly in the night, and if you set a candle in an apple tree lighted in the night, they will fly about it and burn themselves, and you will find abundance of them dead in the morning.
EARWIGS, WASPS, GNATS, HORNETS, AND FLIES.
Earwigs are very numerous, and injurious to fruit, and the way to destroy them is, by placing hoofs, horns, crabs or lobsters claws on branches of trees, into which they will resort; early in the morning take them gently off and shake them into a tub of water, or on the ground, and tread on them. Or, cut a melon or apple, lay it to the ear, cut a hole in it, and lay on that side, and it will come into the apple.
to destroy wasps.
Put pieces of lighted brimstone rags into the wasps holes, where the nest lies, and presently fling a spade full of earth over the holes.
wasps stinging.
Apply a copper half-penny, and hold it for a little space, and it will ease the pain and prevent swelling.
TO DESTROY WORMS
1st. Water wherein the leaves and seeds of hemp is sodden, sprinkled on the earth, brings them out.
2d. Sea water sprinkled on the ground, kills them. Or salt and water made into brine, and sprinkled on the ground. Some say, soot strewed on the ground kills them. Others commend chalk and lime strewed on the ground.
to destory worms in gardens, &c.
Water your bed with the brine of salt meat, and it kills them; or water your garden with a strong lixivium made of ashes; or lay ashes or lime about any plant, and neither snails nor worms will come near it; as the moisture weakens, you may renew it. Some smoke their holes with ox or cow dung; or the mother of oil sprinkled on their holes, kills them.
to destory worms in apple-trees.
Lay a sea onion about the trees, to preserve them from worms; if they come naturally, bull's gall, or hog's dung mingled with man's urine, and poured to tke roots, destroys them; bnt if they are hard to destroy, the bark must be digged into with a brass pin, or such like tool, and tended till the point takes upon the worms, and drive them from the place; but where there is a place ulcerated, stop it with ox-dung. An apple tree plant, the root being anointed with bulls gall, they and their fruit will be free from worms.—Mizaldus.
POLECATS.
1st. If you can conveniently have a channel about your pigeon house, and that will preserve them and all other fowl, for no beast of prey will take the water.
2d. Some make a dead fall to take them, which is made of a square piece of Wood, weighing forty or fifty ponnd; they bore a hole in the middle of the upper side, and set a crooked hook fast in it, also they set four forked stakes fast in the ground, and there lay two sticks across, on which sticks lay a long staff to hold the dead fall up to the crook, and under this crook they put a short stick, fasten a line to it, and this line must reach down to the bridge below; aud this bridge you must make about five or six inches broad. Then set on both sides of this fall, boards or pales, or hedge it with close rods, and make it ten or twelve inches high; let the passage be no wider than the fall is broad.
BADGERS.
Badgers are pernicious creatures, and destroy young lambs, pigs, and poultry. Some make a pitfall about five feet deep, and four long, make it narrow at the top and bottom, and wider in the middle; then cover it with some small sticks and leaves so that he may fall in when he comes on it; sometimes a fox is taken thus.
​Hedgehogs always make their cave or cabin contrary to the wind.
TO DESTROY FOXES.
Foxes are great destroyers of lambs, poultry, geese, &c. to destroy which, take a sheeps paunch, and tie it to a long stick, then rub your shoes well upon it, that he may not scent your sweaty feet; draw this paunch after you as a trail, a mile or more, and bring it near some thick headed tree; leave your paunch, and get into the tree with a gun, and as it begins to be dark, you will see him come after the scent of the trail, where you may shoot him; draw the trail if you can to the windward of the tree.
a spring trap for a fox or badger.
Bend down a stick in the wood, or set a pole in the ground where he uses to come, much like that set up for a woodcock, which hangs them up. To explain it better; tie a string to some pole set fast in the ground, and to this string make fast a small short stick made thin on the upper side, with a notch at the lower end of it; then set another stick fast in the ground, with a nich under it; then bend down the pole, and let both the nicks or notches join as slight as may be; then open the noose of the string, and place it in his path or walk, and if you lay pieces of cheese, flesh, or such like, it will entice him that way.
a hook to take a fox, tied to a tree or gibbet.
This hook is made of large wire, and turns on a swivel, like the collar of a greyhound; it is frequently used in catching wolves, but oftener for the fox. They hang it from the gronnd so high that he must leap to catch it; and bait it with flesh, liver, cheese, &c. and if you run a trail with a sheep's paunch, as before directed, it will draw him the more easily to the bait.
TO TAKE AN OTTER.
1st. Otters are great destroyers of fish, and will travel in a night ten or twelve miles; they lie under the roots of trees near the water; some take them with snares, others with spears, and some with hunting dogs.
2d. To kill them, lay near their haunts an eel slit on the back, with some few corns of rats-bane put in the slit, then sew it up again; place the eel from the navel upwards out of the water, and he will eat it so far, but seldom farther, and it certainly kills him.
Birds are no annoyance to the farmer, or gardens, for they destroy more caterpillars, slugs, snails and other vermin, that do ten times more mischief than they do.
TO CATCH FISH.
Take oculus indiæ, and some wheat flour, and with sweet wine, milk or mead, make a stiff paste, then make pellets, and throw them where fish are, and you may take them with your hands.—Or take assafœtida, flour, milk, and honey, make it into a paste, and bait your hook with it.
to catch eels.
Take sea stonewort an ounce, sea onions one ounce, mix together, and throw where eels come.
to take crab-fish.
Slit a small willow stick, then put a frog in it, and they will come to your hand. Or, cut frogs in pieces, then lay them in a basket and they will come into it.
to take pikes.
Take what qnantity of blown bladders yon will, and tie a line to the mouth of them, longer or shorter, as the water is in depth; bait your look artificially, and the pike will take it, and make you sport: the same ​may be done by tying your line to the leg of a duck of goose.
to take a pike as he lies sleeping and sunning in fair weather, with a loop or net.
March and August is the best time. Take a long pole or rod that is light and straight, on the small end fasten a running loop of twisted horse-hair and silk, or made of wire of a large compass, which gently draw on him, and when it is five or six inches over his gills, hoist him up; if it is a small pike, draw it not so far on, make no noise in walking or speaking; if he lies so that you can't conveniently noose him, touch his tail with the rod, and he will turn as you please; also with a hand net, putting it gently under water, guide it just under him, and lift it softly till you just touch him, and then do it as quick as you can.
to take stock-fish.
Take green moss from the roots, boil it in oil, and make it into baits.
fish to fox.
Take hartwort and unslacked lime beat small, throw it into the water when calm, and it will make them drunk, so that you may take them with your hands.
to take fish with your hand.
1st. Get sheep suet and garlick, mix it with wheat or barley flour, and with wine make it into a paste; throw it into the water, and you may take fish with your hands. Some take elder-leaves, wild marjoram, and thyme, all dried, and mix sheep's blood with them: then dry them in an oven, and throw lumps into the water.
2d. Get unslacked lime, and mingle it with birthwort beat small, and cast into the water, the fish will greedily eat it, and turn on their backs, but they are not the worse for eating. Or with the juice of dragon-wort ​anoint your hands, and they will come to it. Or oil of camomile put to your bait does it.
3d. Get a quarter of an ounce of oriental berries, cummin seed, and aqua vitæ, each a sixth part of an ounce, cheese an ounce, wheat meal three ounces; make little pellets and throw where the fish are.
BIRD LIME.
Stuff prepared after different ways: the common method is to peel a good quantity of holly bark about Midsummer, fill a vessel with it, put spring water to it; boil it till the grey and white bark arise from the green, which will require twelve hours boiling; then take it off the fire, drain the water well from it, separate the barks, lay the green bark on the ground in some cool cellar, covered with any green rank weeds, such as dock thistles, hemlock, &c. to a good thickness; let it lie so fourteen days, by which time it will be a perfect mucilage; then pound it well in a stone mortar till it becomes a tough paste, and that none of the bark be discernible; next after wash it well in some running stream, as long as you perceive the least motes in it; then put it into an earthen pot to ferment, scum it four or five days, as often as any thing rises, and when no more comes, change it into a fresh earthen vessel, and preserve it for use in this manner. Take what quantity you think fit, put it in an earthen pipkin, and a third part of capons or goose grease to it, well clarified, or oil of walnuts, which is better, incorporate them on a gentle fire, and stir it continually till it is cold, and thus it is finished.
To prevent frost; take a quarter of as much oil of Petroleum as you do goose grease, and no cold will congeal it.
how to use bird lime.
When your lime is cold, take your rods and warm them a little over the fire; then take your lime and wind it about the top of your rods, then draw your rods ​asunder one from another, and close them again, tinually plying and working them together, till by smearing one upon another, you have equally bestowed on each rod a sufficient proportion of lime.
If you lime any strings, do it when the lime is hot and at the thinnest, besmearing the strings on all sides by folding them together, and unfolding them again.
If you lime straws, it must be done likewise when the lime is very hot, doing a great qnantity together, as many as you can well grasp in your hand, tossing and working them before the fire till they are all besmeared, every straw having its due proportion of lime; having so done, put them up in cases of leather till you have occasion to use them.
the best way of making water bird-lime.
Buy what quantity you think fit of the strongest bird-lime you can procure, and was hit as long in clear spring water till you find it very pliable, and the hardness thereof removed, then beat out the water extraordinary well, till you cannot perceive a drop to appear, then dry it well; after this put it into an earthen pot, and mingle there with capon's grease unsalted, so much as will make it run, then add thereto two spoonfuls of strong vinegar, a spoonful of the best sallad oil, and a small quantity of Venice turpentine; this is the allowance of these ingredients, which must be added to every pound of strong bird-lime as aforesaid.
Having thus mingled them, boil all gently over a small fire, stirring it continually, then take it from the fire, let it cool; when at any time you have occasion to use it, warm it, and then anoint your twigs or straws, or any other small things, and no water will take away the strength thereof.
This sort of lime is best for snipes and fieldfares.
of taking small birds, which use hedges and bushes, with lime twigs.
The great lime-bush is best for this use, which you ​must take after this manner; cut down the main branch or bough of any bushy tree, whose branch and twigs are long, thick, smooth, and straight, without either pricks or knots, of which the willow, or birch tree are the best; when you have picked it and trimmed it from all superfluity, making the twigs neat and clean, then take the best bird-lime, well mixed and wrought together with goose grease, or capons grease, which, being warmed, lime every twig there with within four fingers of the bottom.
The body from whence these branches have their rise must be untouched with lime.
Be sure you do not daub your twigs with too much lime, for that will give distaste to the birds, yet let none want its proportion, or have any part left bare which onght to be touched; for as too much will deter them from coining, so too little will not hold them when they are there. Having so done, place your bush in some quickset or dead hedge near nnto towns ends, back yards, old houses, or the like: for these are the resort of small birds in the spring time; in the summer and harvest in groves, bushes, or white thorn trees, quickset hedges near corn fields, fruit trees, flax, and hemp lands; and in the winter about houses, hovels, barns, stacks, or other places where stand ricks of corn, or scattered chaff, &c.
As near as you can to any of these haunts, plant your lime bush, and plant yourself also at a convenient distance undiscovered, imitating with your mouth several notes of birds, which you must learn by frequent practice, walking the fields for that purpose very often, observing the variety of several birds sounds, especially such as they call one another by.
Some have been so expert herein, that they could imitate the notes of twenty several sorts of birds at least, by which they have caught ten birds to another's oue that was ignorant therein.
If you cannot attain it by your industry, you must buy then a bird call, of which there are several sorts, ​and easy to be framed; some of wood, some of horn, some of cane, and the like.
Having learnt first how to use this call, you shall sit and call the birds unto you, and as any of them light on your bush, step not out unto them till you see them sufficiently entangle; neither is it requisite to run for every single bird, but let them alone till more come, for the fluttering is as good as a stale to entice them more.
You may take these small birds only with lime twigs without the bush.
Some boys have taken two or three hundred small twigs about the bigness of rushes, and about three inches long, and have gone with them into a field where there were hemp cocks; upon the tops of half a score lying all round together, they have stuck their twigs, and theu have gone and beat that field or the next to it, where they saw any birds, and commonly such fields there are infinite numbers of linnets and green birds, which are great lovers of hemp seed.
And they flying in such vast flocks, they have caught at one fall for them upon the cocks eight dozen at a time.
But to return, there is a pretty way of taking birds with lime-twigs, by placing them near a stale or two made of living bats, placing them aloft that they may be visible to the birds thereabouts, who will no sooner be perceived, but every bird will come and gaze, wondering at the strangeness of the sight, and having no other convenient lighting place, but where the line twigs are you may take what number you list of them. But the owl is a far better stale than the bat, being bigger and more easily to be perceived, besides he is never seen abroad but he is followed and persecuted by all the birds that are near.
If you have not a living bat or owl, their skins will serve as well, stuffed, and will last you twenty years; there are some who have used an owl cut in wood, and naturally painted, with wonderful success.
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, ​where wild geese or ducks come, and strew in that place such seed or grain soaked in lees of wine; where also white hellebore is boiled, you may take forty at a time; it will quickly make them drunk: let now the tied goose or duck come to the seed.
to catch birds.
Take any corn, and steep it in wine lees and juice of hemlock, and cast it to the birds, and it makes them drunk presently.
how to teach birds to speak, or whistle tunes.
Keep them in dark places, and play any tune to them for half a year, or till the time that young birds taken out of the nest begin to sing, and they will learn, if cocks, any tune you please, and exceed a flageolet, especially a linnet, bull-finch, robin or goldfinch, &c. And to teach jays, magpies, starlings, parrots, &c. keep them dark, and hungry, and talk often the same thing to them, by candle-light, or in the night time.
to scare crows, ravens, jackdaws, pigeons, &c.
Crows dead and hung up, much affrights them; but among cherry trees, and other fruit trees, draw a line from tree to tree, and here and there fasten a black feather, and this will do.
the manner of bat fowling.
Observe where birds roost in great numbers, as they generally do in hedges, or trees, then go in a dark night, one with a pole, and beat the contrary side, and two or three be with you, carrying long boughs; and you may easily strike them down; if among shrubs as in a wood use nets, made like a racket at the end of poles, with which they are easily knocked down.
to take sea-pyes, crows, and other birds.
Get a minnow, tie a thread to its tail, and two small ​sticks of osier across at the end of the thread, then lime your twigs with bird lime, and lay them by the river on some rush, water leaf grass, or the like: then when she sees it, eatches it up, and the lime twigs take her wings, and she drops presently.
to take partridge.
Get sweet wine, and with wheat flour, make a paste, lay it in pellets where they come, and they will be soon foxed, so you may take them with your hand. But if you put a little occulous indiæ to it powdered, it is the better.
to take wild ducks, geese, herons, sea gulls, &c.
Drive a stake into the ground two or three feet long, just by the water-side, then take a strong horse-hair with a large look fastened to it, and bait it with fish, or frog, or guts, &c. and let your lines lie in the river and they will swallow it, and so hang that you may take them. Some lay in the same manner snares made of horse-hair, and often catch them by the feet as they wim about.
birds that are lousy.
Anoint them with linseed oil cures them.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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