NOTE-BOOK OF A NATUEALIST. 291 



and serrated in young subjects, but completely smooth in 

 the ancients. This is the Testudo coriacea Mercurii of 

 Eondeletius; Testudo lyra of some German zoologists; 

 Tortue liUJi of the French. These last names seem to 

 claim for it a niche, as contributing to the construction 

 of the ancient lyre; and, indeed, we see no reason for 

 shutting out the thalassian tortoises from the comjoetition. 

 Hear Flaccus in his rapture : — 



O testiidinis aureae 



Dulcem quse strepitum. Fieri, temperas ! 

 O mutts quoque piscibus 



Donatura cycni, si libeat, sonum ! 

 Totum muneris hoc tui est. 



Quod moustror digito praetereimtium 

 Romanae fidicen lyrae : 



Quod spiro et placeo (si placeo) tuum est.* 



But those who point to the third of these grateful and 

 gratifying lines, as evidence in favour of the sea-tortoises, 

 must be reminded that the sphargis, as its name implies,! 

 is so far from being mute, that it utters sounds very near 

 akin to the bellowings of distress when entangled in the 



* Carm. iv. 3. The lyre in the constellation Lyra on the 

 Farnese globe surmounts the shell of a land-tortoise. The instru- 

 ment has six strings only ; one may have been defaced, or it may 

 have been purposely omitted in memory of the lost Pleiad : — 

 Septena putaris 

 Pleiadum numero fila dedisse lyrae. 



Certain wags of yore, by way of frightening the neighbours, 

 used land-tortoises as the vehicles of lights of another description. 

 Having fixed bm-ning tapers on the backs of the tortoises, they 

 turned them down in some cemetery, where the slowly wandering 

 fires, now solitary, now meeting, as if two or more restless spirits 

 were in conclave at the dead hour of night, produced the desired 

 effect. Sometimes they would increase the panic, by adding to the 

 tortoises a corps of able-bodied locustae fitted out in the same 

 manner ; which formed an assemblage of cor2)se-candles and salta- 

 tory^ witch-fires sufficiently appalling. 



t 2(^opayea), to utter a loud sound or roar. 



o2 



