QUAINT RECIPES. 71 



And in the same play (Act iii. Sc. 3) 



" She that, so young, could give out such a seeming, 

 To seel her father's eyes up close as oak." 



In the last line it is more probable, considering the use 

 of the technical term " seel," above explained, that Shake- 

 speare wrote " close as hawk's." 



Sir Emerson Tennant, in his " Sketches of the Natural 

 History of Ceylon," speaking of the goshawk (p. 246), 

 says : " In the district of Anarajapoora, where it is 

 trained for hawking, it is usual, in lieu of a hood, to 

 darken its eyes by means of a silken thread passed 

 through holes in the eyelids." This practice of " seeling " 

 appears to be of some antiquity, but has happily given way, 

 to a great extent, to the more merciful use of the hood. 



The old treatises on falconry contain numerous quaint 

 recipes for the various ailments to which hawks are 

 subject. From one of these we learn that petroleum is 

 nothing new, as some people now-a-days would have us 

 believe. Turbervile, writing in 1575, says, in his " Booke 

 of Falconrie " : " An other approued medecine is to 

 annoint the swelling of your hawkes foot with Oleum 

 petroclium (which is the oyle of a rocke) and with oyle of 

 white Lillies, taking of each of these like quantity, the 

 blood of a pigeon, and the tallow of a candle, heating 

 all these together a little at the fire. This unguent wil 

 throughly resolue the mischief." P. 258. 



