Tawny is prepared from lime and water mixed together, by steeping hair in it for four or five hours, and then soaking it a whole day in a tan pit.
Russet.—Take a pint of strong lye, half a pound of soot, some juice of walnut leaves, and a quart of alum water; put them together into a pan, boil them well, and when the liquor is cold, steep the hair until it acquires the colour you desire.
General Remark.—The hair to be dyed, should always be the best white: the seasons for using dyed hair, are, September and two following months; the yellow, russet all the winter, and until the end of April, as well in rivers as in lakes; for the same periods, the brown and tawny should be used in blackish, heathy, and moorish waters.
Dyeing or Staining Fishing-rods.—Red is done by boiling the wood in water and alum; then taking it out, adding Brazil to the liquor, and giving the wood another boil in it. Black, by brushing it over with logwood, boiled in vinegar, then washing it over with a decoction of galls and copperas, till it be of the hue required. Any other colour may be given by squeezing out the moisture of horse-dung through a sieve, mixing it with dissolved roch alum and gum arabic, and to the whole adding green, blue, or any other colour designed. After standing two or three days, pear-tree or other wood cut to the thickness of half-a-crown is put into the liquor boiling hot, and suffered to remain till it be sufficiently coloured.
In Dyeing Bone, Horn, or Ivory.—Black is performed by steeping brass in aqua fortis till it be turned green; with this, the bone, &c., &c., is to be washed once or twice, and then put in a warm decoction of logwood and water. Green, is verdigris, sal ammoniac, and white wine vinegar; keeping the material therein till sufficiently green. Red is began by boiling it in alum water, and finished by a decoction in a liquor compounded of quicklime steeped in rain-water strained. To every pint an ounce of Brazil wood is added: the bone to be boiled therein till sufficiently red.—Ancient Recipes.
Diet, s. Food, victuals; food regulated by the rules of medicine.
Dig, v. To work with a spade.