OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 217 



1755, humorously disposed of it thus: 'Turtle; 1. A species of dove. 

 2. It is used among sailors and gluttons for a tortoise ' * ; to which 

 Mason, in his 'Supplement,' replies in earnest: 'This assertion is not 

 even true ; for the appellation of turtle does not extend to tortoises 

 in general. If all the land-men who call a sea-tortoise a turtle are 

 therefore gluttons, everybody who understands the word must incur 

 the imputation.' 



" But, notwithstanding Johnson's disparagement, it was destined to 

 win its way into the halls of Science. Just before this time it had begun 

 to be introduced into formal treatises on Natural History, as a conven- 

 ient subordinate name for the sea-tortoise. Hill (who had recently 

 been at a famous turtle-feast at the London Tavern), adopted it in 

 his ' History of Animals,' printed in 1752. Catesby (who had lived 

 much in America) says (1754): 'The sea-tortoise is by our sailors 

 vulgarly called turtle, whereof there are four different kinds.' Gold- 

 smith, in his 'Earth and Animated Nature' (1774), writes: 'Tortoises 

 are usually divided into those that hve upon land, and those that 

 subsist in the water ; and use has made a distinction even in the name, 

 the one being called tortoises and the other turtles.' Martyn, in 1785, 

 in his ' New Dictionary of Natural History, ' has this article : ' Turtle ; 

 an appellation by which the moderns express that kind of tortoise 

 which is found only in the sea, or on^its shores.' And with this re- 

 stricted meaning it has continued to appear, in Encycloptedias, in 

 Transactions of learned societies, and in separate works on Natural 

 History, down to the present day. When it is so used, neither ludi- 



West-India " nabob," and headed with the punning motto (highly relished at the 

 time from the novelty of the subject, and famous since in the annals of wit) : — 



" Dapibus supremi 

 Grata testudo Jovis." — Hor. 

 In 1764 Christopher Smart thus translated Phsedrus, with a hit at contemporary 

 manners : — 



" An eagle on a tortoise fell, 

 Then, mounting, bore him by his shell." 

 The crow proposes a wise method of getting at the meat. 

 " The eagle follows her behest, 

 Then feasts on turtle with his guest." — 



[" Magistra; large divisit dapem."] 

 * Dr. Campbell, great adept as he was in the use of English, seems to have first 

 learned the existence of this use from Johnson's Dictionary. — Philosophy of 

 Ehetoric. 



VOL. IV. 28 



