758 



SEAL ENGRAVING 



March 1 ; they make the ice about 72 or 73 north, in the neighbourhood of the 

 island of Jan Mayan, a volcanic mountain rising 2,000 feet above the level of the sea. 

 The young seals and mothers are found on the pack-ice near this island. There are 

 four species of seals the harp or saddle-back, the bladder-nose or hooded, the ground 

 or bearded, and the floe or rat seal. The seals lie like flocks of sheep upon the ice, 

 but every year they are observedly getting less and less in number. 

 ' Captain Gray writes to me as follows in explanation of this : 

 " On the seals being reached, the men are sent over the ice, the harpooners armed 

 with rifles, the other men with seal-clubs, knife, and steel, also a rope to drag the 

 skins to the ship. And now a work of brutal murder and cruelty goes on enough to 

 make the hardest-hearted turn away with loathing and disgust. The harpooner 

 chooses a place where a number of young seals are lying, knowing well that the 

 mothers will soon make their appearance to see if the young are safe, and are then 

 shot without mercy. This sort of work goes on for a few days, until tens of thousands 

 of young seals are left motherless to die of starvation, not so much from the number 

 of old ones killed (although too many of them are slain at this season, 40,000 being 

 killed last year in March) as from those wounded and scared away. In a short time 

 the old ones become shy and will not come near where the men are standing, but keep 

 at a respectful distance. It is horrible to see the young ones trying to suck the 

 carcases of their mothers, their eyes starting out of their sockets, looking the very 

 picture of famine. They crawl over and over them until quite red with blood, poking 

 them with their noses, no doubt wondering why they are not getting their usual food, 

 uttering painful cries the while. The noise they make is something dreadful. If 

 one could imagine himself surrounded by four or five hundred thousand human babies 

 all crying at the pitch of their voices, he would have some idea of it. Their cry is 

 very like an infant's. These motherless seals collect into lots of five or six, and crawl 

 about the ice, their heads fast becoming the biggest part of their bodies, searching to 

 find the nourishment they stand so much in want of. The females are very affection- 

 ate toward their young." 



'The young seals are born about March 20, and are immediately slaughtered in 

 thousands. At this time they are worth about Is. per skin, and contain little or no 

 oil. If they were not allowed to be killed before April 6, they would have time to 

 suck and grow, and they grow very fast; this terrible "massacre of the innocents " 

 would be prevented, the intelligent and affectionate mother-seals would be spared the 

 agony of seeing their crying cubs slaughtered and skinned before their eyes some- 

 times, as I hear, before they are quite dead while each skin would then be worth 3s. 

 or 4s., and 100 seals would yield oil to the value of from 351. to 40/. All that is re- 

 quired is an international agreement or treaty among the sealing-vessels, which are 

 about 36 in number 20 from Scotland, 15 to 20 from Norway, and 2 from Germany 

 that an annual- close-time should be given to the seals, and that they should not be 

 killed before April 6, instead of March 20, in each year, as these seventeen days 

 would make all the difference between their future multiplication and the present 

 extermination which now threatens.' 



1756 



SEAX. ENGRAVING. The art of 



engraving gems is one of extreme nicety. 

 The stone having received its desired form 

 from the lapidary, the engraver fixes it by 

 cement to the end of a wooden handle, ami 

 ,hen draws the outline of his subject with 

 a brass needle or a diamond, upon its 

 smooth surface. 



Fig. 1756 represents the whole of the 

 seal-engraver's lathe. It consists of a 

 table on which is fixed the mill, a small 

 horizontal cylinder of steel, into one of 

 whose extremities the tool is inserted, and 

 which is made to revolve by the usual fly- 

 wheel, driven by a treddle. The tools that 

 may be fitted to the mill-cylinder are the 

 following: Fig. 1767 a hollow cylinder, 

 for describing circles, and for boring ; fy. 

 1758 a knobbed tool, or rod terminated by 

 a small ball ; fig. 1759 a stem terminated 

 with a cutting-disc whose edge may be 

 either rounded, square, or sharp, being in 

 the last case called a saw. 

 Having fixed the tool best adapted to his style of work in the mill, the artist 



