14 TORTOISES, TERRAPINS, AND TURTLES. 



" A stiU more wholesale mode of destruction is practised by robbing the nests of their eggs. The 

 ' egger ' uses a smaU stiff rod, with which he ' probes ' the sand in those places where Turtles usually 

 deposit their eggs ; and in this way myriads are collected, as may be supposed when it is recollected 

 that many hundreds of Tm*tles lay their eggs on a small space of sand-bank. The ' eggers,' however, do 

 not confine their depredations to nests of the Green Turtles, but they seize upon those of aU other species, 

 as well as upon the eggs of thousands of sea-birds that seek the same localities during their breeding- 

 season. But man is not their only enemy ; many eggs are destroyed by Raccoons, and many young 

 ones fall a prey to various rapacious aquatic birds before they reach the water ; and many more, even 

 after they have reached it, are devoured by ravenous fishes. 



" They vary much in shape at different epochs of their lives ; the carapace is broader in the young, 

 and the vertebral plates are then more extensively transverse. They vary also exceedingly in colour, so 

 that, of hundreds that I have frequently seen together, scarcely two could be selected of precisely similar 

 colours." 



The alveolar surface of the Turtles varies with the food they eat ; thus the truly vegetable-eating 

 Green Turtle, which has such delicate flesh, has two harsh ridges on the alveolar surface of the upper 

 jaw, interrupted by a deep pit in front. The Hawk's-bill and the Logger-head, which are carnivorous, 

 have coarse and offensive flesh, and a much more simple alveolar surface ; the Hawk's-bill has a single 

 linear ridge which is not found in the Logger-head, but has the alveolar surface, both of the upper and 

 lower jaw, simply concave. Similar differences are to be found among the Terrapins or Ereshwater 

 Tortoises. Thus the alveolar surface of the herbivorous Batagur of India has very well-marked 

 ridges, and the more carnivorous Terrapins have this part of the jaws more or less broad and smooth, 

 which form very good characters for separating them into families and genera. 



