228 THE ATLANTIC. [chap. iv. 



causes great havoc among the young turtles as they are escap- 

 ing from their nests and going down the beach to the sea; 

 two species of Sula^ at least two petrels, and the pretty tropic- 

 bird {Phaeton cethereus), which here, as apparently all through 

 the Atlantic, has the tail-feathers pure white. Several of these 

 birds breed upon an outlying islet, called Boatswain-bird Island. 



Between Christmas and midsummer, Ascension is constantly 

 visited, for the purpose of breeding, by the common green 

 turtle {Chelone midas). During that time each female is sup- 

 posed to make three or four nests. The beaches in some of 

 the bays, particularly on the west side of the island, are com- 

 posed of a rough, calcareous sand, made up entirely of small, 

 smooth, rounded pieces of shell. ' The female turtle scrambles 

 about 100 yards or so above high-water mark, where she digs 

 a pit, eight or ten feet across by a foot or two deep, and buries 

 in it fifty or sixty eggs, which she carefully covers over with 

 sand. She then returns to the water till another batch of eggs 

 is mature, when she repeats the process in another place. The 

 young come out of the eggs in about a couj)le of months, and, 

 scrambling through the sand, make their way at once to the 

 water. The females are taken by the usual operation of turn- 

 ing, as they are going back to the sea, and are placed in ponds 

 into which the tide flows below the fort at George Town. 

 There are always a large number of the strange-looking creat- 

 ures in the ponds, whence they are regularly supplied to pass- 

 ing men-of-war. ISTo small turtles are ever seen. The weight 

 of a good-sized turtle is from four to five hundred- weight. I 

 do not think they are by any means so delicate for table use as 

 the much smaller ones in the West Indies. 



Fish are abundant round the island, and of many kinds — 

 mullet, rock -cod, cavallas, and others. They are apparently 

 good, for tropical fish, but of little account to those accustomed 

 to the northern turbot and haddock. The wild quadrupeds 

 and decapods, which may here be classed together, as their 



