CHELONIAMYDAS. 41 



Audubon observes that he saw a man "who, with his peg^ had been known to 

 secure eight hundred Green Turtles in one year — an immense number certainly. 

 It is now the custom, when the peg is pulled out, to replace it with one of wood, 

 and no bad effects follow the injury. When taken, they are kept in pens called 

 "crawls," that are so placed in the water as to be filled at every rise of the tide; 

 and here they are kept until sold. A still more wholesale mode of destruction is 

 practised by robbing the nests of their eggs. The "Egger" uses a small 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 Turtles lay their eggs on a small space of 

 sand bank. The "Eggers," however, do not confine their depredations to the 

 nests of the Green Turtles, but they seize upon those of all 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 Racoons, 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. 



Geographical Distribution. The Chelonia mydas inhabits the sea coast of 

 the extreme southern points of the United States; it has been seldom found as 

 far as latitude 34, which must be considered its northern limit. 



General Remarks. It is a little doubtful if Linnseus had our animal in view 

 when he gave the specific characters of his Testudo mydas, but it is so consi- 

 dered by many naturalists, and almost all have adopted the name. 



As yet I am not prepared to receive into the catalogue of North American rep- 

 tiles the Chelonia virgata of Cuvier, described by Dumeril and Bibron, as well as 

 by Cocteau in Ramon de La Sagra's "Histoire de I'lsle de Cuba," as inhabiting 

 our shores. That such an animal may exist in the Red Sea, as observed by Bruce, 

 Vol. IV.— 6 



