212 TROCEEDINGS OP THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



him for the occasion from the Spanish word, or, what is more probable, 

 that he had heard it from the seamen of that day, with whom it is 

 known he associated,* and who had caught it from Spanish sailors, 

 and modified it with a sailor's usual license.f 



" However this may have been, tortoise appears as the English 

 name, and the only one, in all the original narratives of the great 

 series of English voyages to the West Indies, which began shortly after 

 the publication of Eden's book, and lasted to the end of the century. J 



" Nor was it long confined to seamen's narratives. In 1576 it was 

 adopted by Abraham Fleming, in his translation of JElian's ' Various 

 History,' as the rendering of xf^w*"? ; in 1580 it appears in Barret's 

 Latin-English Dictionary ; great writers of Elizabeth's reign — Bacon, 

 Shakspeare, and others — gave it general currency with their royal 

 stamp; in 1611 it was set in the English Bible; and all English 

 writers since, whether in literature or science, have continued to use it 

 as the ' plain English ' word for testudo,^ and the only one comprising 

 all kinds of testudinous animals. 



" In the early part of the seventeenth century, however, a new 

 name for the marine tortoise of America makes its appearance in some 

 of the sea narratives of that day. In 1602 Captain Bartholomew 



* Sebastian Cabot, who was still living when Eden wrote, was one of them, and 

 he had been in the West Indies. 



t The plural tortugas, rapidly uttered, has a near resemblance in sound. It is 

 worthy of note that where seamen under Sir Walter Raleigh's command write 

 " tortoyses egges," he, the accomplished scholar, always writes " tortugas egges," 

 and tortoise does not appear in his own narratives. 



X Published in Hakluyt's Collection (1600). In the narrative of the second of 

 these voyages to America (that of Hawkins, in 1564-65), written by John Sparke, 

 who was in it, we have, probably, the first printed English account, by an Eiujlish 

 eyewitness, of the sea-tortoise of the West Indies. " Certain islands of sand, called 



the Tortugas These islands bear the name of Tortoises, because of the number 



of them which there do breed, whose nature is to live both in the water and upon 

 land also, but breed only upon the shore, in making a great pit, wherein they lay 

 egges, to the number of 300 or 400, and covering them with sand, they are hatched 

 by the heat of the sunne ; and by this means cometh the great increase. Of these 

 we took very great ones, which have both back and belly all of bone, of the thick- 

 ness of an inch; the fish whereof we proved, eating much like veale ; and finding 

 a number of egges in them, tasted also of them, but they did eat very sweetly." — 

 Hakl. III. 610. . 



§ " Testudo, lacerta, .... in plain English tortoise, lizard" — Dr. John Mason 

 Good (1812), in his Lectures before the Surrey Institution. 



