Sea Lion
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Sea Lion. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
one of the several large-eared seals or otaries. It is a hair seal, not a fur seal. A related species is known as the sea-bear. See Seal Sea-Urchin, a general name for a large group of marine animals belonging to the class known as echinoids. All are more or less cylindrical. Some species are so flattened as to be called sand-dollars, cake-urchins, etc. Like the starfish they inhabit shores and move sluggishly by means of tube feet and spines. They live chiefly on sea weeds and organic matter found in mud and other deposits. The more or less spherical body is protected by ten radial plates that run from pole to pole. Five of these plates bear tube feet; five bear spines varying from mere prickles to spines several inches in length or, in some species, becoming clubs. The sexes are separate as in the case of fishes. The larva is known as pluteus. The shells of sea-urchins are often brightly colored. They are offered in seaside curio shops. The California Indians eat a Pacific species. The common European sea-urchin has long been an article of food. See Starfish
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a popular name for the genus Otaria; specifically, O. (Eume- SEA LION topias, Gray) stelleri, the hair seal of the Pribiloffs, or Steller's sea lion. The male attains a length of 11 or 12 feet, and a weight of about 1,000 pounds. Color golden rufous, darker behind, limbs approaching black. It is destitute of fur, and its skin therefore is of little value, but the hide, fat, flesh, sinews, and intestines are all useful to the Aleutian islanders. The hides yield excellent leather, oil vessels are made from the stomachs, the sinews are used for threads for binding skin canoes, and the flesh is considered a delicacy. Sea lions are found round Kamchatka and the Asiatic coast to the Kurile islands, and there is a colony of them at San Francisco protected by the National government. In heraldry, a monster consisting of the upper part of a lion combined with the tail of a fish.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Aiton's called it "a hair seal, not a fur seal" in 1910 and Collier's filed it under the genus Otaria in 1921, sea lions were valued chiefly for what the Aleuts could make of them — leather, oil vessels from the stomachs, sinew thread. The genus name has since narrowed: Otaria now covers only the South American sea lion, while Collier's "O. stelleri" is Eumetopias jubatus, and one of the six species Collier's would have known, the Japanese sea lion, was last reliably recorded in the 1950s and is considered extinct. Hunting gave way to protection — the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 — but the western Steller sea lion population off Alaska collapsed by roughly 80 percent from the 1970s onward and was listed as endangered in 1997, causes still argued over. The San Francisco colony Collier's noted has moved and multiplied: hundreds of California sea lions took over the docks at Pier 39 after 1989 and are now a tourist fixture.
Written for this edition, 2026.