LEATHERY TURTLE. 15 



peculiar and strange aspect to the young animal. The 

 figure at the head of this description is from the plate in 

 the Prince of Musignano's " Fauna Italica j 11 and was 

 taken from a very young individual. 



The colour of the adult is generally a full brown, with 

 numerous pale yellowish spots ; in the very fine specimen 

 in my collection, the under side of the extremities and 

 throat are white, with black irregular spots, rendering 

 them, in fact, pied. 



This species, which is stated by Mr. Audubon to resort 

 to the Tortugas, or Turtle Islands of Florida, is later than 

 the other species in arriving thither for the purpose of 

 depositing its eggs. The average number laid by it, 

 according to the same authority, may be three hundred 

 and fifty in two sets. It is less cautious than the other 

 species in choosing the places for this important operation. 

 " Its food consists of mollusca, fish, Crustacea, sea-urchins, 

 and various marine plants."' 1 



"The lyre," says Sir John Hawkins, "is the prototype 

 of the fidicinal or stringed species' 1 of instruments, " and is 

 said to have been invented about the year of the world 

 200 by Mercury, who, finding on the bank of the river 

 Nile a shell-fish of the Tortoise kind, which an inundation 

 of the river had left there, and observing that the fish was 

 already consumed, he took up the back-shell, and, hollow- 

 ing it, applied strings to it."* This application of the 

 dorsal shell of a Tortoise to the construction of a musi- 

 cal instrument by Mercury is of very general reception 

 amongst the classical writers, and is even mentioned by 

 Homer in his Hymn to Mercury. To what species of 

 Tortoise the individual belonged, which was destined to be 

 the means of so much enjoyment to mankind in all subse- 



* Harmonia Manual! s, II. p. 29. 



