354 CHELONIA 



biting with a sideward turn of the head. What the jaws have 

 got hold of is not allowed to escape again. The tortoise holds on 

 and tears the prey to pieces with the sharp-clawed fingers. This 

 takes a long time, only the scraped-off flesh and the intestines 

 being eaten. The skeleton remains and sinks to the bottom, 

 while in the case of a fish, the air-bladder floats away on the 

 surface, and remains there as one of the surest signs of the exist- 

 ence of tortoises in that locality. The bones are cleaned with 

 wonderful neatness. Some of my grass-snakes shared this fate, 

 their backbones, with the hundreds of pairs of ribs, being picked 

 or rather scraped clean, scarcely less well than if they had been 

 prepared for a museum. 



As a rule the prey must be in motion to be seized, unless the 

 tortoise has watched it before, and even then the latter prefers to 

 smell it before biting. In captivity they soon learn to eat meat, 

 and they become very tame, but in their native haunts they are 

 extremely shy and cautious. Fond of basking upon a stone or 

 on the banks, with the four limbs sprawling, or with the hind- 

 limbs stretched backwards, and with the webs spread out so as to 

 offer as large a surface as possible to the rays of the sun, they lie 

 motionless for hours and appear fast asleep. But the slightest 

 noise, or any other sign of our approach, is sufficient to send them 

 plumping into the water, and to make them scuttle along with 

 unsuspected agility. Nothing but the audible plump of the flat 

 body and the widening rings of the disturbed water indicate their 

 presence. After a long time of waiting we give it up, and turn 

 away. That very instant we see a little ripple, caused by the 

 withdrawing of the tortoise, which had come to the surface and 

 had been watching us, with only the nose and eyes peeping out of 

 the water, the rest being concealed between the floating vegetation. 

 Apparently they cannot see us well with their eyes still under 

 water, owing to the difference of refraction, otherwise they would 

 not peep out and then at once turn back. It is certainly not for 

 the want of air, since they can remain below for many hours 

 without breathing. 



Although they generally feed in the water, they come on land 

 when tame and hungry enough to take the offered food. Some- 

 times they make long migrations, perhaps because their old home 

 is dried up or does not yield food enough. They hibernate during 

 the cold season, buried in the mud, and they do not appear until 



