SEELING. 69 



"If then we shall shake off our slavish yoke, 

 Imp out our drooping country's broken wing!' 



Richard II. Act ii. Sc. I. 



Passages such as this are likely enough to be overlooked 

 by the majority of readers, but it is in such chiefly that 

 the ornithologist sees a proof that Shakespeare, for the 

 age in which he lived, possessed a surprising knowledge of 

 ornithology. 



Besides " imping," there was another practice in use, 

 now happily obsolete, termed " seeling," to which we find 

 several allusions in the Plays. It consisted in sewing a 

 thread through the upper and under eyelids of a newly- 

 caught hawk, to obscure the sight for a time, and accustom 

 her to the hood. 



Turbervile, in his " Book of Falconrie," 1575, gives the 

 following quaint directions " how to seele a hawke " : 

 " Take a needle threeded with untwisted thread, and 

 (casting your Hawke) take her by the beake, and put the 

 needle through her eye-lidde, not right against the sight of 

 the eye, but somewhat nearer to the beake, because she 

 may see backwards. And you must take good heede that 

 you hurt not the webbe, which is under the eye-lidde, or 

 on the inside thereof. Then put your needle also through 

 that other eye-lidde, drawing the endes of the thread 

 together, tye them over the beake, not with a straight 

 knotte, but cut off the threedes endes neare to the knotte, 

 and twist them together in such sorte, that the eye-liddes 



