IQ TRIONYX FEROX. 



communicate with the 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 

 lakes, that open into the St. Lawrence river. Lastly, previous to the construc- 

 tion of the New York canal. Wood creek, at the head of the Mohawk, also at 

 "spring floods" communicated with the waters of the Oswego river; and conse- 

 quently there the Trionyx could pass to 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 Savannah river on the 

 other. 



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

 the Trionyx fcrox 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, imless 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 

 confined himself simply 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 specific 

 name ferox to this animal, which seems now to have been consecrated by the 

 general use of aU naturalists, with one or tAvo exceptions. Thus Geoffi'oy in 

 establishing the genus Trionyx which has been adopted in this work, reproduces 

 this animal under a new name, Trionyx georgicus, though his description 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, 



