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Small birds

Benarris sing at night if they are left
in serain, but they are better for fattening for
fine tables than for singing. Chaffinches are prone to becoming
blind, & their eyes become swollen at the beginning of
August. Goldfinches like lettuce seeds very
much, & often one catches them in gardens on seeded
lettuces with two lime-twigs. But because such regular
fare would be too expensive for them, they are ordinarily fed with
hemp seed. The passe solitaire is cleansed
with a spider, which one needs to give to it
once a week in order that it does not become
gaillardisse. The calendra is cleansed with dry
mortar, composed of lime & sand for keeping it from
becoming gaillardise & fattening too much. Young small
birds are cleansed with the same dry mortar, by putting some
pieces in their cages. The cuckoo lays in the nest of
benarris otherwise called verdaule.
This bird is very simple. I have heretofore given leave to two,
which after several days returned to their cage. For feeding
young goldfinches, one needs to pestlealmonds with pith a very little amount
of bread pith and lettuce seed or
hemp seed. If it is for linnet, some
rapeseed.


Curried steel and files

The steel that blacksmiths & iron
workers commonly use is not refined like that from
Germany or Biscay, which is reduced in hardness
p in a bath of a molten iron, but
only among the iron bars which are transported in flat
ingots from the forges of Foix & elsewhere,
there is a harder & whiter & finer kind than the other, as it
comes from the mine. And the workers choose it
& use it like the other steel. And because it comes from
common iron, they call it strong iron. But it is not as
excellent as purified steel like that from Germany &
Biscaye, which is sold in small beads. Some curry
steel, giving it a heating, then temper it &
water in a large quantity of water, then forge it.
& fine steel, which is brittle, breaks and crumbles, &
iron allows itself to be stretched. Thus they separate the
finest steel&, which with another heating they
reduce to a mass. The Germans make their files from
strong iron.

One applies steel to tools
dess not on both sides, but underneath the part
where one sharpens & whets them. & in this part, they must be of
very doulx iron.

Levantines refine our
steel because their country does not provide them with any. And
they reheat it in a pot with bitumen, &c.

