Seal
Seal names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Seal sel, a family of marine animals
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
sel, a family of marine animals, including the fur seal, the hair seal, the sea-lion, and the walrus. The seal family is characterized by dog-like heads and massive necks, huge chests, and tapering hinder parts as devoid of a tail as a bear. Teeth, fur, and food indicate relationship in the distant past to the mink and otter kind, but a sea life has brought about marked changes. In the case of the seals, the swimming membrane or web found between the toes of the otter has been extended until the entire foot is inclosed in a broad, flat sac with small, nail-like claws where the ends of the toes ought to be. These changed legs or flippers, as they are called, serve as paddles and enable the seal to swim and dive with marvelous speed and grace. They are jointed, of course, at the wrist and heel, but are peculiarly flexible like the fin of a fish, and may be bent to the body forward or backward. The palm of the front flipper is bare and is crisscrossed by wrinkles in a diamond fashion that enable the seal to lay hold of a slippery rock or cake of ice and haul itself ashore. The life of the fur seal, from the fur of which sealskin cloaks are made, is exceedingly interesting. Formerly it was found by the million on antarctic shores south of New Zealand and the Cape of Good Hope , and especially on the coast of Patagonia and islands of that latitude. The persistent and unintelligent pursuit of a thousand sealing vessels has exterminated the seal in southern waters save in a few small rookeries where a hundred or two remain under protection. As late as 1835 a few were found on the islands off the coast of California, but the fur seal, slightly different, it may be, is now confined practically to four isles in the North Pacific, St. Paul and St. George, two of the Pribilov Islands in Alaskan waters, and two small islands 700 miles to the westward in Russian waters where it breeds under protection. Cool waters, a thick, heavy fog that rolls up from the sea in May and stays all summer, a low temperature seldom rising to 50 deg., drizzling cool mist, and shingly, well drained reaches of shore free from sand, mud, or puddles are found here. The males, or bulls as they are called, reach their full size in seven years. They are then about six and one-half to seven and one-half feet in length and weigh 400 to 600 pounds. The bull has the face of a Newfoundland dog, with fine, expressive eyes, tightly drawn lips, sharp, fish-eating teeth, and a yellowish gray mustache that sweeps away to its shoulders like a pair of plumes. The front flippers are about eighteen inches in length from wrist to tip and are half as wide. The hind flippers are nearly two feet in length beyond the heel, which is straightened out so that they extend backward past the tail. In coming ashore the seal handles its front flippers skillfully, planting them like feet, but it is obliged to haul its body forward by arching or hunching its back. When alarmed it breaks into a lope for a few yards at a pretty good speed, but soon falls quivering with exertion and gasping for breath. Early in May the huge bulls appear at the breeding grounds, fat, fierce, and full of fight, to take up their places on the coast where they await the arrival of the females or cows. Each preempts a plat of ground eight or ten feet square and defends it against all rivals. The bull remains quietly on his own plat two or three yards from his neighbor, unless disturbed by a newcomer who crowds in, then a terrible fight ensues. Two old bulls approach each other warily, with flaming eyes, each seeking the advantage; they fasten their teeth into each other with a grip that does not let go until fur, skin, and blubber come too. When the battle is over the weaker bull hauls on to some unoccupied place or perhaps measures strength with some other occupant of a desirable plot. The victor sinks down with a grunt of mingled satisfaction and contentment. He fans himself complacently with a flipper to cool his heated body, but with a sharp eye out to see that no neighbor encroaches on his domain. After at least a month of this waiting and guarding, all the time without a mouthful of food, the bulls are thrown into a pitch of excitement by the arrival of the cows, meek, slender, beautiful creatures about one sixth of the size of the male. A terrific hurly-burly sets in. The cows come ashore in troops and platoons, seeking a place of quiet to have their young. Each bull endeavors to have as many as possible camp down with him. While a bull near the shore is reaching for a new recruit, bulls at the rear are reaching into his yard and lifting out the cows by the nape of the neck as a cat does her kittens and at the same time they are being robbed by those further back, and so on to the fifth and the tenth and the twentieth station in the rear. The noise at this season is terrific. The coughing, spitting, and roaring of thousands of bulls may be heard six miles off the fogbound coast and lets the navigator know that it is time to cast anchor and feel his way in. As soon as a cow obtains a moment of quiet she gives birth to a single black-haired pup about the size of a muskrat. The rookery, as a breeding ground is called, is literally thronged with a mass of cows and pups through which the excited bulls charge and fight for a week or two, keeping their cows at home, and driving their rivals away. Mr. H. W. Elliot, whose observations were published in 1880, tells of one bold fighter who maintained his chosen place at the edge of the water in forty pitched battles. At the end of six weeks he was a bloody, bitten, torn old chap, minus one eye, flippers torn to shreds, and hide lacking by the mouthful, but happy, lording it like a king over a little herd of fifteen cows and their pups. Strangely enough few pups are killed, although they are squeezed flat often enough. After the males have become completely exhausted by weeks of fasting and fighting, they subside. The cows go out to sea hundreds of miles for food, but return every few days to suckle their young, which each recognizes by its cry, though a quarter of a million pups are bleating at the same time. The pups are ready to suckle any mother, but she will have none but her own, so none go hungry. In the absence of their mothers, the pups roll and play and tumble down to the shore. When they first fall into the water they nearly drown, the big head and shoulder end of the body insists on pointing downward, but by degrees they learn to use their flippers to keep their heads above water. Toward the end of the season, the old males, once covered with blubber and fat as butter, but now reduced to living skeletons, haul down to the shore and slide off into the sea to seek food. The mothers and rolling fat pups follow. When winter sets in the rookeries are without an occupant. The seals, big and little, are scattered over the North Pacific from Japan to Oregon pursuing fish. The seal has a large chest and lung capacity, enabling it to breathe so much air that it is able to dive for a long time and to great depths, no doubt several hundred feet. When satisfied with food the seal at sea lies on its back, folds its flippers comfortably against its body, and sleeps with just the tip of its nose and stub of its tail out of the water. Kipling describes the slumber of the young seal in The Seal's Lullaby in beautiful language: O! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us, And black are the waters that sparkled so green, The moon, o'er the combers, looks downward to find us At rest in the hollows that rustle between. Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow; Ah, weary wee flippering, curl at thy ease! The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas. The taking of sealskins is not a pleasant theme. When the males have taken their position in the spring, young seals are not allowed to land. The young males, especially, know enough not to make the attempt until they are six or seven years old. These holluschickie, a word meaning bachelors, and the young cows land elsewhere on suitable grounds. The natives, three or four hundred of whom live on the seal islands for the purpose, get between a band of bachelors and the sea, usually before daylight, and drive them inland at the rate of half a mile an hour to the villages, where they are killed with clubs. Their skins are piled up in the mows of fur houses close at hand, first a skin, hairy side down, then a heavy sprinkling of salt, then another skin until a bin is full. Elliot states that, in 1874, 84 men secured 90,000 skins in 39 days. They get forty cents a skin for the work and expect to take off fifteen in an hour. Cut skins are rejected. At the close of the season the salted skins are mated and put together, two and two, hair outside. Each pair is rolled up and corded into a little bale weighing from nine to twenty-four pounds for the two skins according to age. The skins of males only, two to six years old, are desired. In loading and the reverse the bales are tossed from hand to hand, and are shipped by boat and rail via San Francisco to New York or over the Panama route to London, where they are sold at great annual fur auctions. Tanning and dressing is done to best advantage in Europe on account of the cheapness of labor. About three skins are necessary for a lady's sacque. The difference in price is due more to difference in workmanship than to difference in original quality. Seal fur is far from handsome at the outset. It is so thick that the seal can live in water without getting wet. The hair is of two lengths. The longer hairs are plucked out by being caught between the workman's thumb and a knife edge. The short fur is colored by dye applied from day to day with a brush. A well dyed sealskin cloak will not discolor a white collar or soil the most delicate fabric even when wet by snow or rain. The United States limits the taking of seals to a single company allowed to kill 100,000 males a season. The Russians follow a similar plan. Seal fur has become so valuable that seal poachers, as they are called, have followed the seal in the summer season in the open sea, shooting them from boats as they lie afloat. It has been difficult to stop the practice, as the sea three miles off shore belongs to no one nation, and a poacher could not be molested save by a ship belonging to his own nation. It is estimated that a million mother seals have been slain in the sea during the past twenty years and that as many pups have died ashore for want of food, one for each female. Russia, the United States, and Canada have endeavored to protect the fur seal, and it may yet be possible to save it from extermination. It is reported that not over 200,000 still repair to the Pribilov Islands each spring in place of several millions as late as 1890. The American catch for 1905 was only 14,476 skins, but they brought $100 apiece in the London market. Aside from the fur seal, other seals of importance are the Greenland seal, a hairy seal, chased for its blubber. It is naturally an important animal in the life of the Eskimos, who depend on its flesh for food, its blubber for heat and fat, and its sinews for thread. It is followed by a fleet of half a hundred ships for the sake of the oil tried from its blubber. Its fur is not valuable. The harbor seal is a small, docile seal worthless for commercial purposes, but a welcome animal in Atlantic harbors. The sea-lion, a huge animal twice the size of a fur seal, is of importance to the Aleut Indian. A traveler tells of seeing a squaw take away the choicest parts of a sea-lion, of which the following use was made. The gullet was used for a boot leg; the palms of the front flippers were used for boot soles; the stomach was blown up like a bladder and dried for an oil jar or oil bag; the small intestine, sixty feet long, was stretched from stake to stake clear of the ground, slit from end to end, cleaned, pressed flat, dried, and cut up into pieces suitable for making a waterproof cloak. The sinews of the back were used for thread to make the cloak. The liver and the leaf lard were saved like those of a calf for eating; the gall bag was kept to poultice a scrofulous sore; the hams and loins were hung by the hind flippers to dry for meat; and the bristles of the mustache were pulled out and saved for sale to the Chinese by way of San Francisco for probers for their opium pipes. So much for the sea-lion or big seal. See Walrus; Manatee ; Porpoise ; Whale ; Fur
Seal a piece of wax bearing the impression made by a die
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a piece of wax bearing the impression made by a die. The name is given also to the die with which the impression is made. Sealingwax is made of various materials. Beeswax, shellac, Venetian red, turpentine, and resin are common materials. Vermilion is a favorite pigment. The face of a die or seal resembles usually that of a coin. Formerly the seal took the form of a signet ring, the die being cut on a raised portion of the metal or preferably on the gem with which the ring was ornamented. Letters and other documents were fastened with tape, the ends of which were brought together and imbedded in a piece of wax on which the die was impressed. It was impossible to open such a packet without either cutting the string or breaking the seal. The letters which Cicero's guards took from Catiline's messengers were sealed in this way. During the Middle Ages it was customary to authenticate documents by attaching seals to them, appended usually by the aid of a string. Later the wax was laid on the paper and stamped. At the present time the seal has degenerated into an impression made by the notary's stamp in the paper itself. To documents of dignity and importance, however, as passports and other state papers, the formality of affixing a red or blue disc of paper is still observed. Within the remembrance of people still living, the envelope of ordinary correspondence were fastened with sealingwax or wafers. The custom is still permissible for polite correspondence, but, in general, letter seals have been superseded by gummed edges. See Ring ; Wax Sea elephant. the seal Hooded seal. the seal Harbor seal. Greenland seal. the seal
Seal an impression made on paper
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
an impression made on paper, clay, wax, or other substance, by means of a die of metal, stone, or other hard material. The stamp which yields the impression is frequently itself called the The use seals may be traced seal. to the remotest antiquity. The Bible contains frequent allusions to them, and their use has been common in all the European states from the earliest historical affixed to legal instruments periods. It is so as to furnish evidence of their authenticity.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Aiton's wrote this in 1910 the fur seal was on the edge: the southern rookeries were gone and the animal was "practically confined" to the Pribilofs and two Russian islands. The following year the North Pacific Fur Seal Convention of 1911, signed by the United States, Britain, Russia and Japan, banned pelagic sealing, and the Pribilof herd climbed from a few hundred thousand back into the millions by the mid-twentieth century; the Antarctic fur seals Aiton's counted in "a hundred or two" also recovered spectacularly at South Georgia. Commercial killing on the Pribilofs ended in 1984, and the northern fur seal, in decline again, has been listed as depleted under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act since 1988. The zoology has moved too: the walrus is now placed in a family of its own (Odobenidae) apart from the eared seals and the true seals, and molecular work ties the pinnipeds not to the mink and otter line but to a single carnivore ancestor near the bears and musteloids, with fossils such as Enaliarctos showing the transition to sea life.
Written for this edition, 2026.