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The Spanish Sporting Crossbow
which will have to be carefully strained and then put over a fire to
boil. All froth and viscosity which may remain must be skimmed off the
juice. When this is done, the juice must be strained again and then set
in the sun from 10 o'clock in the morning till the day declines.
' This process will have to be repeated for three or four days or more.
Each day before the juice is set in the sun it must be strained, when it
should be like syrup, and of the same colour but thicker. If you put a
straw or a bit of stick in it, it should adhere to it, and that which gathers
together most quickly and which if smelt makes people sneeze violently,
is the strongest.
' Some people who make this decoction boil it, instead of exposing it
to the sun, but this decoction is not so strong as that which is set in
the sun.
' The poison may be tried on a chicken or a young pigeon to see if it
is right. Take a needle with thread, wet the thread in the mixture and
pass it through the sole of the chicken's foot between the skin and the
flesh till it bleeds, then, in the time of saying " Credo," the bird will
nod and in a very short time will die. The same will happen with a cat
or any other animal if the decoction is good.
' I have seen such a thing happen, that when a stag receives a wound
from a poisoned arrow it runs a hundred paces, more or less, and then turns
its head towards the place whence it received the shot; in a very short
time, during which the animal stands still if it can do so, the poison
reaches its heart and so puts an end to its life.
' This may be known by the animal beginning to cough and toss its head
and vomit; then in an instant it is dead.
' Let it not be thought that without the poison the animal dies of the
wound of the arrow though it has received it in a mortal part.
' If the animal be wounded only in the hoof, and if it bleeds at all,
this poison will work into the blood and death will soon come. There are
other decoctions made from other herbs which are slower in their effects
though they also kill. There are also others which make an animal stagger,
reel and vomit only, and the more they vomit the sooner they recover.
' The places where the poison is slowest to take effect, are wounds
in the stomach, for as there is no blood in the stomach the strength of
the poison is spent in its contents.
' The animals which most quickly die from the poison are those of most
choleric temper. The wild boar, the wolf and the cat, die very quickly.' |
