Egregious Newfoundland Design Error: 1897 #70 15cent Scarlet.

The Newfoundland 1897 15cent scarlet (Scott #7) was designed by the American Bank Note Company, I don't know their history but today they have offices in Canada as well as Australia and the US, of course. Whoever designed the stamp, where ever they lived, clearly had no idea about seals of any sort but especially about the seals that inhabit Canada's East coast. The seals on the stamp are Fur Seals, and the illustration was probably based on either drawings or photographs of Alaskan Fur Seals on the Pribilof Islands.



Newfoundland has three species of seals, the Harbour seal (Phoca vitulina), the Harp seal (Phoca groenlandica), and the Hooded seal (Cystophora cristata), with occasional visits by Bearded seals (Erignathus barbatus). Harbour seals are solitary, for the most part, and both Harps and Hooded seals only loosely congregate during the breeding season on ice floes. None of these seals can stand up upon their flippers.

The Fur seals on the Newfoundland stamp design are in a typical, Northern, Fur seal colony, in the North Pacific, and all have the ability to stand up upon their flippers just as Sealions also do - but that's another story.

Ugruk

* * * Moved by moderator to more appropriate topic area * * *

Love it! Very interesting.

I didn't know about that one. Nice.

There's a thread with some other interesting Design Errors in the Topicals forum.
http://goscf.com/t/65892

Welcome!

Interesting points and great explanation.

Perhaps a moderator can move this to a proper topic location.

(Ugruk, this topic is for testing or practicing posting of stuff or reporting or asking about site issues. You wonderful topic belongs in topicals or EFO (Errors freaks and oddities--which include design errors) or Canada.