Barley water is made by boiling pearl barley in water. This may be used
in fevers, either alone, or as a vehicle for nitre or other medicine.
Various other decoctions are occasionally employed, and sometimes
preferred on account of their cheapness, to more efficacious, but more
expensive medicines; yet it must be recollected that some vegetables,
such as peppermint, pennyroyal, &c. have their useful properties
dissipated by much boiling, and should therefore be only simmered for a
few minutes, or only infused.—_White._
DECOY, _v._ To lure into a cage, to entrap.
The decoys now in use are formed by cutting pipes, or tapering ditches,
widened and deepened as they approach the water; in various semicircular
directions, through the swampy ground, into particular large pools,
which are sheltered by surrounding trees or bushes, and situated
commonly in the midst of the solitary marsh. At the narrow points of
these ditches farthest from the pool, by which they are filled with
water, the fowlers place their funnel nets: from these the ditch is
covered by a continued arch of netting, supported by hoops, to the
desired distance; and all along both sides, screens formed of reeds are
set up so as to prevent the possibility of the birds seeing the
decoyman; and as these birds feed during the night, all is ready
prepared for this sport in the evening. The fowler, then placed on the
leeward side, sometimes with the help of his well-trained dog, but
always by that of his better trained tame decoy ducks, begins the
business of destruction. The latter, directed by his well known whistle,
or excited forward by the floating hempseed, which he strews
occasionally upon the water, entice all the wild ducks after them under
the netting; and as soon as this is observed, the man or his dog, as the
fitness of opportunity may direct, is from the rear exposed to the view
of the birds, by which they are so alarmed that they dare not offer to
return, and are prevented by the nets from escaping upwards: they
therefore press forward in the utmost confusion to the end of the pipe,
into the purse nets there prepared to receive them, while their
treacherous guides remain behind in conscious security. The season
allowed by act of parliament for catching these birds in this way,
continues only from the latter end of October till February.
Particular spots or decoys, in the fen countries, are let to the fowlers
at a rent of from five to thirty pounds per annum; and Pennant instances
a season in which thirty-one thousand two hundred ducks, including teals
and widgeons, were sold in London only, from ten of these decoys near
Wainfleet, in Lincolnshire. Formerly, according to Willoughby, the
ducks, while in moult and unable to fly, were driven by men in boats,
furnished with long poles, with which they splashed the water, between
long nets, stretched vertically across the pools, in the shape of two
sides of a triangle, into lesser nets placed at the point, and in this
way, he says four thousand were taken at one driving in Deeping-fen; and
Latham has quoted an instance of two thousand six hundred and forty-six
being taken in two days, near Spalding in Lincolnshire; but this manner
of catching them while in moult is now prohibited.
DECOY, _s._ Allurement to mischief.
DECOY-DUCK, _s._ A duck that lures others.
DEER, _s._ That class of animals which is hunted for venison. _Vide_
FALLOW, RED, and ROE DEER.
DEGENERATE, _v._ To fall from its kind, to grow wild or base.
DEMULCENT, _a._ Softening, mollifying.
DEMULCENTS, _s._ Medicines of an oily and mucilaginous nature, as
lint and quince seed, gum, &c.
DEN, _s._ A cavern or hollow running horizontally; the cave of a
wild beast.
DEOBSTRUENT, _s._ A medicine that has the power to resolve
viscidities.
DESTROY, _v._ To kill; to put an end to.
It is not unfrequently a subject of inquiry, how it may be possible to
destroy a dog with least pain to himself, and least shock to the
feelings of his owner. Although shooting and hanging are not, in
themselves, painful deaths, yet the violence necessarily committed is
revolting to one’s feelings. Whenever, therefore, cases arise (and many
such do occur) where it would be infinitely more humane to destroy an
animal than to prolong a miserable existence, and when the more usual
modes are objected to on account of the violence and force necessary,
either of these essential oils, _cherry laurel, and bitter almond_,
dropped on the tongue, or a very small ball made from the extract, will
extinguish life almost instantaneously, and without pain.—_Blaine._
DETERGE, _v._ To cleanse a sore. _Vide_ CAUSTICS.
DETONATION, _s._ A noise somewhat more forcible than the ordinary
crackling of salts in calcination, as in the going off of the
pulvis or aurum fulminans. _Vide_ PERCUSSION.
DETONATING POWDER, _s._ A chemical composition by which
percussion-guns are discharged.