For dying feathers use clear soft water; to strike the colour add to
each pint of water a piece of alum about the size of a walnut; to dye
white feathers yellow, boil them in onion peelings or saffron. Blue
feathers by being boiled as above become a fine olive colour. To dye
white feathers blue, boil them in Indigo, by mixing the blue and yellow
together, and boiling feathers in the mixed liquid, they become green.
Logwood dyes lilac, or pink; to turn red hackles brown, boil them in
copperas. To stain hair or gut for a dun colour, boil walnut leaves and
a small quantity of soot in a quart of water for half an hour, steep
the gut till it turns the colour you require. To stain gut or hair
blue, warm some ink, in which steep for a few minutes, then wash in
clean water immediately; by steeping hair or gut in the union dye, it
will turn a yellowish green, and in gin and ink it becomes a curious
water colour.