The food for a moulting hawk should be nutritious without being too heavy. It should be good and very plentiful. In fact, the bird should be able to eat whenever she has a fancy to, and to eat as much as she will. Accordingly, each time that rations are served out they should be ample to last until the next supply will be forthcoming. In quality the viands may be rich and high-flavoured, if the hawk can stomach them. John Barr moulted a falcon in an exceedingly short space of time by supplying her constantly with the heads, necks, and pinions of fat ducks, keeping her mostly under a small tented shelter, upon the outside of which a summer sun beat down with almost ferocious force. He declared that the feathers, nourished by the fat contained in these succulent meals, came down broader and stronger, as well as faster, than he had ever known in other instances. Thus a "grene goose" was anciently recommended for moulting hawks' diet, and on the same principle an ideal food for moulting merlins or sparrow-hawks would be fat quails. These little hawks are, however, often nauseated by eating birds which are very fat. The heads, necks, and pinions of fowls should always be given freely to moulting hawks, not only because the meat on them is of a good kind, but because they make capital tirings, and so provide exercise at a time when exercise is very difficult to find. Mice for the small hawks, rats for goshawks, and rabbits for the other big hawks, should also be often supplied; and plenty of castings should be given, or the internal fat which accumulates in a moulting hawk will either rob her of her appetite or cause some obstinate and perhaps dangerous disorder. It is not to be supposed that the ancient falconers, who were so fond of physicking their hawks, could omit to discover artificial methods of expediting the moult. A couple of specimens of fashionable prescriptions may be worth quoting for just what they are worth: "When ye meane to further the mewing of your hawke, take of the snayles that have shelles, stampe them shelles and all, strayning them through a cloth, and with the oyle that comes thereof wash hir meate two or three tymes. Also take of the snayles that lie in running streames, give your hawke of them in the morning; for that will both scowre hir and nourish hir greatly, and setteth hir up and maketh hir to mew apace. Master Michelin, in his _Book of the King of Cyprus_, sayeth thus: 'Cut an adder in two parts and seeth him in water, and with that water and wheate togither fede your pullets, pigeons, turtles, and other birds which you intend to allow your hawkes that are slack to mewe, and soone after they shall mewe their feathers apace.'"