BIOLOGY AND NATURAL HISTORY 225 



to Louisiana, New Mexico ( ! ) and California.* The immediate geographic 

 source of a terrapin brought to market is now, therefore, even more than in 

 the past, no reliable indication of its type. 



EXPERIMENTAL PROPAGATION 



The question of exhaustion of a self-reproducing actual resource is not 

 always one that is easily answered with assurance. It would, however, seem 

 unnatural if an animal as highly valued and as eagerly sought as the 

 diamond-back terrapin, as limited in distribution (to estuarial areas), as 

 weak in reproduction, as slow in growth and as helpless against man, had 

 not suffered serious depletion in two centuries of search, capture and de- 

 struction. While exact quantitative data were not available, it was not 

 doubted at the turn of the century that the more northern areas of fishery 

 had been depleted of terrapin for many decades, that even the extensive 

 Chesapeake area had long had greatly reduced population, and that the 

 North Carolina terrapin were reduced almost to the vanishing point. At any 

 rate, at the beginning of the present century, two definite moves were 

 undertaken to replenish the supply by propagating terrapin under artificial 

 conditions. 



In 1902, studies and experiments were begun at two places — in the Ches- 

 apeake Bay area at Lloyd's, Md., in charge of Dr. W. P. Hay, and at 

 Beaufort, N. C, under the direction of the present writer assisted by Mr. 

 Charles Hatsel. These were prompted by the late Dr. Hugh M. Smith, in 

 charge of Scientific Inquiry in the United States Fish Commission ^ and the 

 late Professor Joseph A. Holmes, State Geologist and Director of the North 

 Carolina Geological Survey.^ The experiments and studies at Beaufort were 

 at first supported cooperatively by the Federal Government and the State. 

 The early studies at Beaufort resulted in part in the publication of Bulletin 

 No. 14 of the Geological Survey (Coker, 1906). In 1904 the support of scien- 

 tific work at the fisheries station by the State was discontinued. Although the 

 small terrapin stock at Beaufort was kept and maintained by the custodian 

 of the laboratory, Mr. H. D. Aller, and Mr. Hatsel, the Government's em- 

 phasis was shifted temporarily to the Chesapeake. In 1909 the activities and 

 breeding stock were transferred to Beaufort, Dr. Hay continuing to give 

 general direction until 19 15. During this period Mr. Aller planned and carried 

 out the significant new undertaking of winter-feeding of yearling terrapin in 

 warmed nursery houses. Guidance of the work was later in the hands of the 

 successive Directors, Lewis Radcliffe, S. F. Hildebrand, R. L. Barney, and 



4. Letter of Dr. Paul E. Thompson, U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Aug. 12, 1949. 



5. Part predecessor of the present U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service. 



6. Later, North Carolina Geological and Economic Survey, part predecessor of the present 

 Department of Conservation and Development. 



