[795] “‘Plume,’ v., to pluck the feathers off the quarry.”—Harting.
[796] There is a peculiar fascination about Eastern devices for bird-catching; the methods are so quaint and so successful, and the “quarry” is so varied.
[797] Eagles are slow in flight, but make up for their slowness by dropping suddenly from a height.
[798] Kabāb, “meat cut in little bits and roasted on a skewer,” is by a weird metaphor applied to a heart torn by grief, or love.
[799] It is possible to catch eagles in an ordinary du-gaza, for I have done so. A “sparrow-hawk du-gaza,” however, is sometimes much smaller than an ordinary du-gaza. I have caught hobbies in a du-gaza about two spans high and about four long, suspended on straws or thorns.
[800] Presumably a sparrow was the bait. For a kestril, however, a mole-cricket is a surer bait.
[801] Nasaq is any mutilating (or corporal) punishment, such as cutting off the nose and ears, etc., etc.
CHAPTER LXIX
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES
If wheat be soaked three times in the froth of a mast camel and then dried and given to birds to eat, they will fall senseless. Also if beans be boiled in rats-bane,[802] and then scattered in a spot where common cranes, and wild geese, and crows, and choughs collect, those that eat thereof will fall down in a swoon, and if left alone will become ḥarām.[803] When you take these birds, cut their throats and at once rip open the stomach and cast away the contents, so that the poison may not spread to the flesh.[804]
If you lose a hawk when out hawking and do not recover her till the next day or a few days after, know that, whether she be a young hawk of the year or a moulted[805] hawk, she will ever after be a trouble to you, for her nature will have changed for the worse, especially if she has preyed for herself while out. As for me, I would not keep her; my friends may please themselves.