for the prince regent, for Donna Maria Teresa, and for the members of the court. He designed the valuable silver service which was presented by the Portuguese nation to Wellington, and a monument that was erected in 1820 in the Rocio square at Lisbon. In 1823 he visited Paris, where he is known to have tried his skill in lithography and etching. The last years of his life he spent in Rome, devoting himself chiefly to devotional subjects and to his duties as head of the Portuguese Academy. He died in Rome in 1837. His best-known pictures are the “Last Moments of the Poet Camoens,” “Flight into Egypt,” “Ugolino,” the “St Bruno” at the Lisbon Academy, and the “Descent from the Cross.” Numerous paintings by Sequeira are in the royal palace at Mafra, the convent of Laveinas, the new palace of Ajuda, and in the principal palaces and churches of Lisbon.,
SEQUESTER, VIBIUS (4th or 5th century, A.D.), the supposed
author of an alphabetical list of geographical names occurring
in the Roman poets, with special reference to Virgil, Ovid and
Lucan. Several of the names given cannot be traced; unless
this is the result of carelessness or ignorance, the compiler must
have had access to sources no longer extant.
Editions by C. Bursian (Zurich, 1867), and in Riese, Geographi Latini minores (1878); see also Teuffel, Hist. of Roman Literature (Eng. trans., 1900), 445, 1.
SEQUESTRATION, the act of removing, separating or seizing
anything from the possession of its owner, particularly in law,
of the taking possession of property under process of law for the
benefit of creditors or the state. The Latin sequestrare, to set
aside or surrender, a late use, is derived from sequester, a
depositary or trustee, one in whose hands a thing in dispute was
placed till the dispute was settled; this was a term of Roman
jurisprudence (cf. Digest L. 16,115). By derivation it must be
connected with sequi, to follow; possibly the development in
meaning may be follower, attendant, intermediary, hence trustee.
In English “sequestered” means merely secluded, withdrawn.
In law, the term “sequestration” has many applications;
thus it is applied to the act of a belligerent power which seizes
the debts due from its own subject to the enemy power; to a
writ directed to persons, “sequestrators,” to enter on the property
of the defendant and seize the goods (see Execution); to the
action of taking profits of a benefice to satisfy the creditors of
the incumbent, As the goods of the Church cannot be touched
by a lay hand, the writ is issued to the bishop, and he issues the
sequestration order to the churchwardens who collect the profits
and satisfy the demand. Similarly when a benefice is vacant
the churchwardens take out sequestration under the seal of the
Ordinary and manage the profits for the next incumbent. In
the Scots law of bankruptcy the term “sequestration” is used
of the taking of the bankrupt’s estate by order of the court for
the benefit of the creditors (see Bankruptcy, § Scottish Bankruptcy
Legislation).
SEQUIN (the French form of Ital. zecchino, zecchino d’oro),
the name of a Venetian gold coin, first minted about 1280, and
in use until the fall of the Venetian Republic. It was worth
about nine shillings. It bore on the obverse a figure of St Mark
blessing the banner of the republic, held by a kneeling doge, and
on the reverse a figure of Christ. Milan and Genoa also issued
gold sequins. The word in Italian was formed from zecca,
Span. zeca, a mint, an adaptation of Arabic sikka, a die for coins.
In the sense of “newly-coined,” the Hindi or Persian sikka,
anglicised sicca, was specifically used of a rupee, containing
more silver than the East India Company's rupee, coined in
1793 by the Bengal government. The “sicca-rupee” ceased to
be circulated after 1836. The term “sequin” is now used for
small discs made of thin pieces of metal, tinfoil, celluloid or
other composite material, highly glazed and brightly coloured,
and applied as trimming for ladies' dresses.
SEQUOIA, a genus of conifers, allied to Taxodium and Cryptomeria,
forming one of several surviving links between the firs
and the cypresses. The two species are evergreen trees of large
size, indigenous to the west coast of North America. Both bear
their round or ovoid male catkins at the ends of the slender
terminal branchlets; the ovoid cones, either terminal or on
short lateral twigs, have thick woody scales dilated at the
extremity, with a broad disk depressed in the centre and usually
furnished with a short spine; at the base of the scales are from
three to seven ovules, which become reversed or partially so
by compression, ripening into small angular seed with a narrow
Wing-like expansion.
The redwood of the Californian woodsmen, S. sempervirens, on which the genus was originally founded by Stephan Endlicher, abounds on the Pacific coast from the southern borders of Oregon southward to about 12 m. south of Punta Gorda, Monterey county, California, forming a narrow mountain forest belt, rarely extending more than 20 or 30 m. from the coast or beyond the influence of ocean fogs, or more than 3000 ft. above sea-level (see C. S. Sargent, Silva of North America, vol. x.). It grows to a gigantic size, from 200 to 300 ft. or more in height, with a diameter of from 12 to 15, or rarely 20 to 28 ft. at the much-buttressed base.
Sequoia sempervirens—a, Branch with green cones and male catkins;
b, Section of cone; c, Scale of cone. All slightly reduced.
Professor Sargent refers to it as the tallest American tree, which probably occasionally reaches 400 ft. or more in height. In old age the huge columnar trunk rises to a great height bare of boughs, while on the upper part the branches are short and irregular. The bark is red, like that of the Scots fir, deeply furrowed, with the ridges often much curved and twisted. When young the tree is one of the most graceful of the conifers: the stem rises straight and tapering, with somewhat irregular whorls of drooping branches, the lower ones sweeping the ground-giving an elegant conical outline. The twigs are densely clothed with flat spreading linear leaves of a fine glossy green above and glaucous beneath; in the old trees they become shorter and more rigid and partly lose their distichous habit. The cones, from 34 to 1 in. long, are at first of a bluish-green colour, but when mature change to a reddish brown; the scales are very small at the base, dilating into a broad thick head, with a short curved spine below the deep transverse depression. From the great size of the trunk and the even grain of the red cedar-like wood it is a valuable tree to the farmer and carpenter: it splits readily and evenly, and planes
