214 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



the opening of a sliee turtle At the day appointed of nature .... 



there creepeth out a multitude of tortoyses, as it were pismires out of 

 an ant-hill.' 



" The writer of the other narrative, Sylvester Jourdan (likewise of 

 the company), says : ' There are also great store of tortoses (which 

 some call turtles), and them so great,' &c. ' The tortose itself is all 



very good meate We carried away with us a good portion of tor- 



toyse oil.' 



"In 1612 appeared a further account of Bermuda, a colony having 

 now been planted there, the second English colony in the New World, 

 and the first insular one. In it occurs this passage : ' TiirUes [sic] 

 there be of mighty bigness. One turhle will serve or suffice three or 

 four score at a meal, especially if it be a shee turMe.' 



In 1622 Richard Norwood published a still later account of this 

 colony, in which he says : ' Of two particulars .... I will speak. The 

 first shall bee the tortoyse, which they call a turtle.* .... And, first, of 

 the TURCKLE [sic] They are like to fowle in respect to the small- 



* Why did they give it this new name ? No aboriginal name appears to resem- 

 ble it (though tourehe, the Abnaki word for tortue, according to Father Rasles, and 

 " torope, or little turtle," used in 1613 by Whittaker, a minister in the Virginia 

 colony, may point to the source of terrapin). Was it not, then, a direct waggish 

 transfer of the name of the bird which is proverbial for conjugal tenderness and 

 fidelity to these briny monsters, as observed by sailors in their pairing-time ? The 

 ludicrousness of the contrast will only heighten the probability to those who have 

 been conversant with sailors, especially in boating excursions for purposes of Natural 

 History. A turn for the ludicrous is always apt to show itself in the names they 

 bestow on objects new to them. Even their own rude play they call " sky-larking "; 

 and it was in a " light-horseman " that Captain Gosnold's people, in 1602, brought 

 off to their ship probably the first turtles on record. " We went in our UgJit-horse- 

 man from this island [Cuttyhunk] to the main [near the site of New Bedford]," 

 where the natives gave them " furres, tobacco, turtles,'" &c. — The tortoise seems 

 always to have been, in one way or another, associated with birds, now for some 

 contrast, and again for some striking resemblance. " Testudo volat " was the 

 Roman proverb for an impossibility; yet we^ow know, from the highest living 

 authority on such subjects, that the sea-tortoise does, in fact, literally ^^ through 

 the water, having in its fore extremities true wings, as to the bony structure and 

 the mode of action. In their manners, too, testudinous reptiles present both a 

 contrast and a resemblance to birds. Though they have not " billing and cooing," 

 they are not without " a voice " and certain endearing ways. " Professor Jeffries 

 Wyman had once the rare opportunit}' of watching two chrysemys picfa [not, 

 however, sea-tortoises] while making love, and he saw the male patting and caress- 



