14 T R I O N Y X FEROX. 



waters of Lake Michigan in spring floods, so that even loaded boats may pass, 

 and in this way does our animal reach the chain of the lakes that open into the 

 St. Lawrence river. Lastly, previous to the construction of the New York canal. 

 Wood creek at the head of the Mohawk, also at spring floods communicated with 

 the waters of the OsAvego river; and consequently there the Trionyx could pass 

 and become "common in the Mohawk," and reach the Hudson, though absent 

 from every other river opening into the Atlantic, between the St. Lawrence on the 

 one hand, and the Savannah on the other. 



General Remarks. To Dr. Garden is due the merit of having first described 

 the Trionyx ferox in a memoir communicated to Pennant, the celebrated English 

 naturalist. This memoir was read before the Royal Society of London in the 

 year 1771, and then published in the sixty-first volume of their Transactions. 

 The description is accurate, and is accompanied by three tolerable drawings 

 done from life, and giving three different views of the animal. How it obtained 

 the specific name of Ferox, I cannot determine, unless it might be from its 

 habits as described by Garden — "this animal is very fierce" — and it is uncertain 

 by whom it was first applied. It was not Pennant who thus named it, for he 

 simply confined hhnself to the memoir of Dr. Garden — "A New Species of Fresh 

 water Turtle, commonly called the Soft-shelled Turtle" — and yet most authors 

 refer this name to him. Twelve years after this, I find Schneider, for the first 

 time, applying the name ferox to this animal, which seems now to have been con- 

 secrated by the general use of all naturalists, with one or two exceptions. Thus 

 Geoffroy in establisiiing the genus Trionyx which has been adopted in this work, 

 reproduces this animal under a new name, Trionyx georgicus, though his descrip- 

 tion is taken from Pennant. Lesueur next gives an accurate description and 

 drawing of the Trionyx ferox, but under the name Trionyx spiniferus, from the 

 knobs and spines on the carapace, in which he is partly excusable, for he thought 

 it might be a new species of Turtle; for he says it is possible that this animal (T. 

 spiniferus) may be the Trionyx ferox, but from its geographical distribution he 

 doubts it, as he has observed in the United States that even at short distances 

 the same species no longer exist. This is perfectly true as regards the Atlantic 



