LEATHERY TURTLE. 1d 
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;” 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. 
“ Tts food consists of mollusca, fish, crustacea, sea-urchins, 
and various marine plants.” 
‘“‘The lyre,” says Sir John Hawkins, “is the prototype 
of the fidicinal or stringed species” 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 Manualis, II. p. 29. 
