TORTOISES AND TURTLES 



l6l 



Turtlp:s 



Certain of the Terrapins, or Water- tortoises, belonging to the groups above described 

 frequent saline rivcr-estiiaries and salt marshes, but none are strictly marine. With the 

 Turtle Family, however, we arrive at an exclusively pelagic section, in which the animals 

 are specially adapted for life in the high seas, the walking-limbs of the terrestrial and 

 fresh-water species being replaced by long and powerful swimming-flippers. The shell in 

 these marine Chelonians is more or less heart-shaped and flattened, and the carapace and 

 plastron are always separate, and never united in a rigid box-like form, as with the Land- 

 tortoises. In common with those fresh-water tortoises which pass the greater portion of 

 their existence in lakes or rivers, the Marine Turtles resort to the land to deposit their 

 eggs. The locations chosen are the sand-beaches or isolated sandy islets in tropical oceans, 

 wherein, after exca\'ating hollows to receive them, the eggs arc covered up and left to 



By ftrmiuian of iht NeiL' Vark Zooht^udl Sourly 



SNAPPING- TURTLE 



Also knoivn ai the AUigtitor-Urrapiti^ ivith reference to its long^ alUgalor-like tail 



hatch with the heat of the sun. The eggs of turtles differ from those of the Land-tortoises 

 and Terrapins in that their external covering is soft or leathery. So soon as the young 

 turtles are hatched, they emerge from the sand, and instinctively make their way to the 

 water. Many, however, are the perils that beset their course, and few there be out of 

 perhaps So or lOO turtlets which gain the shore and get through into deep water. Fish- 

 hawks and sea-birds of every description are waiting read}" to pounce down upon them 

 immediately they make their appearance, or to thin their ranks as they run the gauntlet of 

 perhaps lOO yards or so to reach the sea in safety. Even at the water's edge the ordeal is 

 by no means passed. Shoals of the smaller sharks and other predatory fish are continually 

 cruising round in the shallow water, and have as high an appreciation of the toothsomeness 

 of tender turtle as the proverbial London alderman. The writer was fortunate on one 

 occasion, among the coral islands on the Australian coasts, to light upon a young turtle brood 



