SEA 
Scotland, and on the south side of the island of Lewis, 
which separates Lewis properly so called, from Harris. 
SEAFORTHIA [so named by Mr. Brown, in honour of 
Francis Lord Seaforth], in Botany, a genus of the class poly- 
gamia, order monoecia, natural order of palmse pennatifolise. 
—Essential Character. Calyx deeply three-cleft. Corolla 
deeply three-cleft. Stamens numerous. Germen with, one 
seed. Stigmas three. Berry oval. Seed striated. Albumen 
sinuous. Embryo at the base. Some flowers have an abor¬ 
tive pistil; other intermediate solitary ones are entirely 
female. 
Seaforthia elegans.—Observed by Mr. Brown in the tro¬ 
pical part of New Holland. A large and handsome palm, 
with pinnate leaves; the leaflets plaited and folded, jagged 
at the extremity. The genus is allied to Caryota, but 
essentially different in the structure of the germen, and situa¬ 
tion of the embryo. 
SE'A-FOWL, s. Birds that live at sea.—The bills of 
curlews, and many other sea-fowl, are very long, to enable 
them to hunt for the worms. Derhatn. 
SEA-FOX. The Squalus Vulpis. 
SE'AGARLAND, s. An herb. 
SE'A-GIRDLES, s. pi. A sort of sea-mushrooms. 
SE'A-GIRT, adj. Girded or encircled by the sea. 
Neptune, besides the sway 
Of every salt flood and each ebbing stream, 
Took in by lot, ’twixt high and nether Jove, 
Imperial rule of all the sea-girt isles. Milton. 
SE'A-GOD, s. One of the fabulous deities of the sea. 
Weever—doth holiness retain 
Above his fellow-floods; whose healthful virtues taught. 
Hath of the sea-gods oft caus'd Weever to be sought. 
Drayton. 
SE'A-GOWN, s. A mariner’s short-sleeved gown. Sher¬ 
wood. 
Up from my cabin, 
My sea-gown scarf’d about me, in the dark 
Grop’d I to find them out Shakspeare. 
SE'A-GRASS, s. An herb growing on the sea-shore. 
SE'A-GREEN, adj. Resembling the colour of the distant 
sea; cerulean.-—White, red, yellow, blue, with their mix¬ 
tures, as green, scarlet, purple, and sea-green come in by the 
eyes. Locke. 
Upon his urn reclin’d. 
His sea-green mantle waving in the wind, 
The god appear’d. Pope. 
SE'A-GREEN, s. The plant saxifrage. 
SEAGRY, Upper and Lower, two hamlets of England, 
in Wiltshire; 4§ miles south-by-east of Malmesbury. 
SE'A-GULL, s. A bird common on the sea-coasts, of a 
light gray colour; sometimes called the sea-crow. — Sea¬ 
gulls, when they flock together from the sea towards the 
shores, foreshow rain and wind. Bacon. 
SEAHAM, a parish of England, county of Durham; 5 
miles south-by-east of Sunderland. 
SEA-HEDGE-HOG, s. A kind of sea shell-fish. See 
Echinus. 
SEA-HEN, s. The Colymbus Troile. 
SE'A-HOG, s. The porpus. 
SE'A-HOLLY, s. A plant. See Eryngium. 
SE'A-HOLM, s. A small uninhabited island.—Sea-holly. 
A kind of sea-weed.—Cornwall bringeth forth a greater store 
of sea-holm and camphire than any other county. Carew. 
SE'A-HORSE, s. A fish of a very singular form.—The 
morse.—Part of a large tooth, round and tapering; a tusk of 
the morse, or walrus, called by some the sea-horse. 
Woodward. —The natural and the poetical sea-horse seem 
very different. By the sea-horse Dryden means probably 
the hippopotamus. 
Sea-horses, floundering in the slimy mud, 
Toss’d up their heads, and dash’d the oose about ’em. 
Dryden. 
Vql. XXII. No. 1548. 
SEA 
889 
SEA-HORSE ISLAND, an island in Hudson’s Bay. Lat. 
62. N. long. 92. 50. W. 
SEA-HORSE POINT, a cape on the east of a peninsula 
in Hudson’s Bay. Lat. 64. N. long. 82. 10. W. 
SEAKONNET, Point and Rocks, in the United States, 
the south extremity of the eastern shore which forms the en¬ 
trance of Narraganset Bay, in the state of Rhode Island; 
about 6 miles east-south-east of Newport. 
SEAL, s. [jreol, pele, Saxon; seel, Danish.] The sea- 
calf. 
An island salt and bare, 
The haunt of seals, and ores, and seamews clang. Milton • 
SEAL, s. [jrilel, Saxon ; sigillum, Lat.] A stamp en¬ 
graved with a particular impression, which is fixed upon the 
wax that closes letters, or affixed as a testimony. 
The king commands you 
To render up the great seal. Shakspeare. 
The impression made in wax. 
’Till thou can’st rail the seal from off my bond. 
Thou but offend’st thy lungs to speak so loud. Shakspeare. 
Any act of confirmation. 
They their fill of love 
Took largely of their mutual guilt the seal. Milton. 
The use of seals is very ancient, an instance of which 
occurs in Daniel, chap. vi. 17. But seals are still older than 
this; for Jezebel, in 1 Kings, chap. xxi. seals the orders she 
sent for Naboth’s death with the king’s ring. See also Jerem. 
xxxii. 10, &c. 
In France the custom anciently was, instead of signing 
their instruments, &c., only to seal them; as appears from 
an infinity of ancient charters, which are not signed at all; 
the reason of which was, that in those days very few people 
were able to write: scarcely any body, indeed, could read 
and write but clerks; and the custom continued when learn¬ 
ing made its way among them, though the reason for doing 
it had ceased. 
In England, the first sealed charter we find extant is that 
of Edward the Confessor, upon his founding of Westminster 
Abbey; yet we read of seals in the MS. history of king 
Offa. 
And Sir Edward Coke relies on an instance of king Ed- 
wyn’s making use of a seal about an hundred years before 
the conquest; though some have doubted the authenticity 
of this charter, because it is certain that sealing was not then 
in common use. 
Before the time of William the Conqueror, the English 
did not seal with wax, but only made a golden cross on the 
parchment, and sometimes an impression on a piece of lead, 
which hung to the grant with a silken string, and was deemed 
an abundant authorizing of the grant itself, without either 
signing or witnesses. 
This practice of affixing the sign of the cross proceeded 
from their inability to write; which is honestly avowed by 
Caedwalla, a Saxon king, at the end of one of his charters: 
“ propria manu pro ignorantia literarum signum sanctae 
crucis expressi et subscripsi.’’ 
The colour of the wax with which William’s grants were 
sealed, was usually green, to signify that the act continued 
for ever fresh, and of force. The usual impression on all 
laymen’s seals, till the year 1218, was a man on horseback, 
with a sword in his hand; afterwards, they began to engrave 
their coats of arms on their seals; only the archbishops and 
bishops, by a decree of cardinal Otto, who was legate here 
in 1237, were to bear in their seals their title, office, dignity, 
and even their proper names. 
The emperors long sealed all their acts of importance with 
a golden seal; and the golden bull of Charles IV. for the 
election of an emperor, takes its name from the gold seal 
hanging to it, which is called bull. 
Theod. Hopink, a German lawyer, has furnished the 
world with a learned and curious work on the subject of 
seals, printed in 1642, at Nuremberg, in quarto, under the 
title, “ de Sigillorum prisco et novo Jure, Tractatus Prac- 
10 R ticus,” 
