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 
petrcelium (which is the oyle of a rocke) and with oyle of 
white Fillies, 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. 
