Further ills procure his end.

The same rule applies to hawks, too. Now, as soon as you see that when you throw the meat to your hawk she grasps it with her broken leg, change the jess from the sound to the unsound leg, and then break the former as you did the latter. Item: (and the best remedy of all) take a broken piece of a mercury-backed mirror, grind it very fine, and sift it through taffeta, so that it is as fine as collyrium of antimony. Then mix with it the gall of a black goat, and make it into the consistency of an ointment. Bind this ointment on to the feet of your hawk in the morning, removing it in the evening. After removing it, let her rest for half an hour. Again bind on this poultice, removing it in the morning. Again, after half an hour, bind on a fresh one and leave it on till sunset. That blackness will by this time have been drawn out and will protrude somewhat. Take hold of the blackness with tweezers and gently pull it. By the dispensation of the Creator the corn will come out by the root.[740] Fill the cavity left, with powdered antimony, and see that the feet are kept quite dry. This cure was invented by the writer and has been proved by experiment. Item: take fresh hot cow-dung and add to it double the quantity of salt.[741] Apply the mixture thickly to the perch, and renew twice a day, morning and evening, for a month or forty days. She will be entirely cured. Doubtless you will say that to keep a hooded falcon on such a perch may be easy; but what about an unhooded yellow-eyed hawk? This is my answer: take your hawk, t̤arlān, qizil, or sparrow-hawk—or whatever she may be—into a dark room and drive into the wall, as a perch, a wooden peg of proper thickness,[742] but not so round that the cow-dung will not stand on it: the perch should be broad. The hawk should be so tied to this perch that when she bates she will remain hanging. For the first day or two she must be watched by your man, for the heat of the cow-dung and salt will certainly make her “bate.” When she “bates,” go not near her; let her “bate” till she is exhausted: then, when she is quite still, and has ceased beating her wings, raise her and replace her on the perch. Every time she “bates” act in this manner. After a little, she will put up with the burning in her feet, finding it a lesser evil than hanging head downwards. In two or three days her feet will become numbed and she will no longer feel pain in them, and will therefore cease to “bate.” You must put on such a quantity of cow-dung that the hawk’s feet are buried in it. The fresher and warmer the cow-dung, the more efficacious the effect and the speedier the cure.[743] You should, in fact, tether a cow near the “mew” so as to have a fresh supply of dung ever at hand.

Now as regards the second form of this disease, called ḥafā, the symptoms are the same as in mīk͟hak, except that in ḥafā the blackness is absent from the sole of the feet. Treatment: bind on her feet, a few nights, powdered ispaghul seed as previously described, and she shall be cured. Item: pound up a little of the skin or rind of sweet pomegranate,[744] and add thereto a little salt. Apply this a few times to the perch, in the manner described, and the disease will disappear. Item: take acorns and gall-apples and pound them together, add camel’s urine to make a dough, and bind on to the feet a few times, and she will be cured. Item: take camel’s urine and green ispaghul,[745] and pound together; boil slightly; remove and place on the ground to cool. When luke-warm, immerse the hawk’s feet for half an hour, and the ill will be removed. Item: take her on the fist and carry her every day, and lure her. The glove and “carriage”[746] will cure her better than anything else.

If she’s ill, let the falconer carry the hawk;

Both man and bird will get good from the walk.

Item: keep her on a rough stone or rock, instead of on a perch.[747]

I have myself tested these remedies for mīk͟hak and ḥafā, and I have certainly found them beneficial.

FOOTNOTES:

[731] “When yowre hawkes fete be swollyn she hath the podagre.”—Boke of St. Albans. “Podager” is said to be gout in the feet (from pod “a foot”), but the name was probably applied to the initial stage of the “pinne in the feet” of other writers.

[732] Mīk͟hak.