CHELONIA MYDAS. 31 



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. 

 When taken, they are kept in pens, called "crawls," that are so placed in the 

 water as to be filled at every flood tide; and here they remain 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 Linnaeus had our animal in view 

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

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



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

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

 as by Cocteau in Ramon de Lasagra's "Histoire de I'Isle de Cuba," as 

 inhabiting our shores. That such an animal may exist in the Red Sea, as 



* Audubon, loc. cit., p. 373. 



