Notes on Florida Turtles 



By T H E O D O K E ROOSEVELT 



Jf'rifti'ii ill iniii}) iiriir I'liiild (fiinlii mi tlic (iulf of Mcjiio 



DURIJv^G the last week of March, 

 I 191T, I spent a few days near 

 Punta Gorda, Florida, on a 

 trip after devilfish, being the guest of 

 Mr. Russell J. Coles, whose piece on 

 devilfish in this magazine^ was the very 

 best thing of its kind that has ever been 

 written. 



One day we visited an island which, 

 while I was President, was made into a 

 bird reserve 2 on the initiative of the 



1 See American Museum Journal, Vol. XVI, 

 No. 4. 



- One of several small islands in Charlotte Har- 

 bor established as government reservations during 

 Roosevelt's administration. The first Federal bird 

 reservation in the United States was made by 

 Roosevelt through his authority as President. 

 Somewhat later a law was passed by Congress 

 vesting in the President power to set aside govern- 

 ment lands as bird reserves. No less than fifty-one 

 such reservations were established during Roose- 

 velt's tenure of office, covering many parts of the 

 United States from Florida to Oregon. 



^ It chances that Dr. G. Clyde Fisher, of the scientific staff of the American Museum of Natural 

 History, has given considerable field study to the gopher tortoise (Testudo polyphemus) of Florida. It 

 is therefore a pleasure to append to Colonel Roosevelt's valuable record of observations a brief article 

 covering some of Dr. Fisher's personal experiences with this species. — The Editor. 



Audubon Society. We forced our way 

 through the thick belt of mangroves 

 which fringed the island to the smaller 

 area of higher land inside, on which 

 grew Florida figs, pawpaws, and one or 

 two other kinds of tropical trees. Here 

 to our surprise we came across a bur- 

 row. I had no idea what creature had 

 made it, but Captain Jack McCann, a 

 native Florida fisherman who was with 

 us, at once said it was the burrow of a 

 gopher. My book knowledge enabled 

 me to realize that he was speaking, not 

 of the burrowing pouched rat — which 

 in Florida is rather absurdly called 

 "salamander" — but of a big land tor- 

 toise. The burrow was shallow and we 

 speedily dug out the occupant. It was 

 a fairly large specimen, weighing IIV2 



The gopher tortoise digs its own burrow, whicli niuy be twenty to thirty feet in length. The sand is 

 heaped at the doorway, and the burrow of course just fits the turtle which has done the digging, the floor 

 being shaped by the flat plastron and the roof arched in just the curve of the carapace. The "gopher 

 snake" (SpUotes corals couperi) goes in and out the burrows, no doubt on friendly terms with the own- 

 ers, and the "gopher frog" (Ra7ia cBsopus), also on friendly terms, sits in the doorway at dusk and hides 

 in the retreat if an enemy appears. One of the first acts of the baby gopher tortoise after coming from 

 its egg is to dig itself a burrow, a miniature of its parent's home 



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