ACCIDENTS AND MALADIES 237 



spices and peppers will be preferred, with fatty substances, such 

 as oil or bacon ; while for the latter, purgatives may be used, and 

 meat washed in the juice of certain vegetable products, such as 

 endive, cucumber, or melon. If the malady is so strong as to 

 amount to fever, the hawk's feet may be bathed with water 

 distilled from lettuce, plantain, or nightshade, or the juice of 

 henbane. If, however, the earliest symptoms are noted, it will 

 generally serve all purposes to give hot feeds, i.e. birds just 

 killed, in the case of cold, and washed meat in the case of 

 too great heat. Those w^ho are not content to wait for such 

 symptoms, but prefer a prophylactic treatment, may perhaps be 

 satisfied with the following prescription : " If you intend to 

 keepe and maintayne your Falcons and all other Hawkes in 

 health, take Germander, Pelamountayne, Basill, Grimel-sede, and 

 Broome flowers, of each of them halfe an ownce ; of Isop, of 

 Saxifrage, of Polipodic, and of Horse-mintes, of each of them 

 a quarter of an ownce ; of Nutmegges, a quarter of an ownce ; 

 of Cucubes, Borage, Mummy, Mogemort, Sage, of the four 

 kinds of Mirobolans, Indorum, Kabulorum, Beliricorum, and 

 Embelicorum, of each of them halfe an ownce ; of Saffron, an 

 ownce; and of Aloes Cicotrine, the fifth part of an ownce. All 

 these things confect to a powder, and at every eygth day, or 

 at every twelfth day, give your Hawkes (the big ones, that is) 

 the quantitie of a beane of it with their meate. And if they 

 will not take it so, put it in a Henne's gutte, tied at both ends, or 

 else after some other meanes, so as ye cause them to receive it 

 downe ; and lette them stand emptie one houre after." A more 

 simple preventive medicine is Aloes Cicotrine alone, given 

 every eighteen days as an emetic, just after the hawk has cast, 

 and followed in two hours' time by a warm meal. 



Coming now to specific maladies, the commonest and 

 not the least dangerous of the complaints to which trained 

 hawks are subject is the " croaks " or " kecks," an affec- 

 tion of the throat akin to what is called bronchitis in 

 the human patient. Its existence is betrayed by a wheez- 

 ing or hoarseness, noticeable as the hawk breathes. In 

 slight cases the sound is scarcely audible, and only very 

 occasionally ; but when the attack is a bad one, the breath is 

 impeded, and the invalid appears to be suffering from a sort of 

 asthma. These severe attacks sometimes come on suddenly in 

 bad weather, and generally prove fatal ; but the milder attacks, 

 if attended to in time, may often be mastered and vanish per- 

 manently. The cause is usually the same as that which would 



