280 AMERICAN TESTUDINATA. Part II. 



The whole tract of the ahmentary canal is provided with folds, between which 

 there are everywhere crypts from the stomach to the anus. The coecum is small, 

 or wanting. A large, broad liver, continuous from one side of the body to the 

 other, by means of a bridge, receives the heart in front between its two halves. 

 A large gall-bladder is imbedded on the right side. The spleen and the pancreas 

 are never wanting ; the spleen is generally attached to the pancreas, and this to 

 the duodenum. The spleen is an ovoid, or globular, solid body, while the pan- 

 creas is more or less divided into lobes, often broadly and thinly scattered, pai'- 

 ticularly in the herbivorous Turtles, and, on the whole, of a very irregular shape. 

 As among Mammalia, so among Turtles, the pancreas is generally much larger in 

 the carnivorous ftimilies than in the herbivorous, having, for instance, in the her- 

 bivorous Testudo polyphemus only about 30V7 the weight of the body, while in 

 Emys serrata, which feeds upon fishes, moUusks, and worms, etc., about X2V0' ^^^ 

 in Chelonura serpentina, which is entirely carnivorous, even g^^-. But, as a strange 

 exception, we see in the herbivorous Chelonia Caouana the number sj-^-^ All Turtles 

 digest rather slowly, particularly the herbivorous land Turtles, which keep always 

 a store of half-digested vegetables in their enormously large intestine. Turtles stand 

 hunger for several months ; Emyds, if they are provided with water, for more than a 

 year. All Turtles which we had an opportunity to observe, when drinking, held the 

 head under the level of the water, and evidently swallowed the water. The Gala- 

 pagos land Turtles, (Testudo indica,) however, are said to drink like most Birds, 

 by taking a mouth full of water, and then holding up the head and neck ver- 

 tically, letting the water run down through the oesophagus. Turtles, (particularly 

 the land and fresh-water Turtles,) like Frogs, usually carry with themselves a 

 quantity of water in the cloaca. According to recent observations of Professor 

 J. Wyman, this water is taken up through the anus. 



^ See Jos. Jones, 1. c, p. 107, where a list is given far as we know it feeds, like the other Chelonioidae, 



containing the weight of the pancreas in proportion to upon sea-weed. If this be true, the law given by J. 



the body for several Fishes, Amphibians, Reptiles, Jones, in rehition to the proportionate size of the 



and Mammalia. For the Loggerhead-Turtle, (Che- pancreas, (1. c., p. 108,) is evidently not without ex- 



lonia Caouana,) which J. Jones has numbered among ceptions, and it shows also how careful we must be in 



the carnivorous Reptiles, we have to remark, that as drawing such broad conclusions. 



