PREPARATION OF THE PRODUCTS. 549 



making their features sufficiently attractive on chicken and 

 cheesecakes, no diet is likely to succeed so well as delicate cut- 

 lets from the loin of a seal. 



" For my own part I cannot help thinking that the diminu- 

 tion in the number of seals caught near the principal Danish 

 settlements in Greeland, has a great deal to do with the preva- 

 lence of consumption and other diseases among the native in- 

 habitants of those places. Seals are becoming scarcer every 

 year, and, in company with the bison of the North American 

 prairies, will ere long be of the past, and leave the poor Green- 

 lander and Bed Indian to follow them." 



PREPARATION OF THE PRODUCTS. The Seals being captured 

 and brought into port, their subsequent treatment as practised by 

 the Newfoundland sealers, may be briefly detailed as follows : 

 After landing and weighing the " pelts," the fat is immediately re- 

 moved from the skin. This is accomplished by extending the 

 pelt on a table, behind which the skinner stands, holding the skin 

 with the left hand while with a large skinning-knife he removes 

 the fat with the right hand ; a good skinner, it is stated, being 

 able to " remove the fat from the skins of four hundred and fifty 

 Harp Seals in ten hours." The skins are then salted and packed, 

 with the flesh side uppermost, and at the -end of three weeks are 

 considered cured and fit for shipping. The fat is reduced to oil 

 either by maceration in vats in the sun, or is " rendered " by steam. 

 The latter process is so rapid that at the establishment of John 

 Munn & Co., at Harbour Grace, four thousand "pelts" have 

 been "skinned and rendered into pure Seal oil in twenty -four 

 hours." Although the steam-rendered oil meets with ready sale 

 in consequence of its superior burning qualities and freedom 

 from disagreeable odor, it is less free from smoke than that ex- 

 tracted by the agency of the sun, and for this reason the latter 

 is preferred by the miners. " Formerly every description of 

 Seals' oil was entirely manufactured in wooden vats exposed to 

 the weather," the vats being capable of containing three thou- 

 sand to four thousand Seals' pelts. When the fat from old Seals 

 is mixed with that from the young, "the oil obtained is some- 

 what smoky." When drawn off from the tanks, all the oil ren- 

 dered from the fat of young Seals is sure to come first and is 

 called "pale seal," the other being heavier and darker, and 

 known as " straw color." 



From Schultz's minute account of the sealing industry of the 

 Caspian Sea I transcribe the following, as of general interest in 



