[637] The wall would naturally be of mud or of sun-dried bricks and would cost little.
[638] Sakū is a “wooden bench, a garden seat”; or as here a “mud platform.”
The author has not expressed himself at all clearly or else there are omissions in the text. The passage might mean that the platforms should be forty inches apart or be forty inches high.
[639] “Weathering” is placing hawks, usually unhooded, in the open air on blocks. Eastern falconers do not “weather” their hawks, as during the hawking season the hawks are on their fists in the open air many hours.
[640] I have never seen a saker eat stones.
[641] Ṣafrā, “yellow bile,” one of the four humours of the body.
[642] In the plains of India, hawks during the moult should not be so gorged, at least not during the four or five months of hot weather. Hawks that are kept too fat will not moult properly. Further they should be fed only once in the day, and that in the morning. If gorged in the evening, their rest is affected, and they do not get the benefit of the slight coolness of the night.
[643] I one year, in Kohat, India, tried moulting a young (chūz) peregrine in a large outhouse, high and roomy. The hawk did not moult at all, and frequently got so fat and heavy that she was unable to fly up to her perch until her food was reduced for a day or two. However, falconers in England recommend keeping a moulting hawk loose in a loft.
CHAPTER XL
REMEDIES FOR SLOW MOULTING
Moulting hawks are of two kinds; the one “generous,” the other “miserly.” The “generous” are those that moult quickly; the “miserly” those that positively refuse to part with their feathers. Should you happen to have a hawk of the latter description and wish to make it moult quickly, then:—