SEELING. 69 
“If then we shall shake off our slavish yoke, 
Imp out our drooping country’s broken wing.” 
Richard I, Act ii. Se. 1. 
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 
