The gamekeeper is among the few people left in the country who have
any knowledge of herb-lore, and faith in home-brewed herbal remedies.
His medicine-chest contains a varied assortment. From rose-pink
centaury he boils an appetising tonic for his pheasants, which he is
not above drinking himself. The roots of couch-grass provide him with
a powerful emetic for dogs in the first stages of distemper. He bakes
acorns, grinds them to powder, and with its aid quells a rebellious
stomach. His good-wife has the secret of cowslip and nettle tea. From
the pounded leaves of dock blended with lard, he prepares a salve for
cuts. Rheumatism, from which all keepers suffer in their old age, is
treated with the fat of hedgehogs, well rubbed in--not that this is a
herbal remedy. Cramp in pheasants calls for cayenne pepper boiled in
their food; chopped onions are for gape-worms; a little saffron with
drinking water--as much as will lie on a threepenny-bit in the water
for a thousand birds--assists young birds through the troubles of
feather-growing; while the first moult is aided by a few crystals of
sulphate of iron in water. But oil is the sovereign remedy: castor-oil
for dogs out of sorts, oil of almonds for the glued eyelids of blind
birds, linseed-oil and laudanum for gapes--oil of every kind for every
purpose. With corn scented with oil of rhodium-wood the keeper lays a
trail which every pheasant must follow.
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