692 A. E. Verrill—The Bermuda Islands. 
“Tn regard that much waste and abuse hath been offered and yet 
is by sundrye lewd and imp’vident p’sons inhabitinge wthin these 
Islands, who in there continuall goinges out to sea for fish doe upon 
all occasions, and at all tymes as they can meete with them, snatch 
& catch up indifferentlye all kinds of Tortoyses, both yonge & old, 
little and greate, and soe kill, carrye awaye and devoure them to the 
much decay of the breed of so excellent a fishe, the daylye skarringe 
of them from of our shores and the danger of an utter distroyinge 
and losse of them. It is therefore enacted by the Authoritie of 
this present Assembly That from hence forward noe manner of pson 
or psons of what degree or condition soever he be, inhabitinge or 
remayning at any time within these Islands, shall p’esume to kill or 
cause to be killed in any Bay, Sound, Harbor or any other place out 
to Sea: being within five leagues round about of those Islands, any 
young ‘fortoyses that are or shall not be found to be Eighteen inches 
in the Breadth or Dyameter, and that upon the penaltye for everye 
such offence of the fforfeyture of fifteen pounds of Tobacco, whereof 
the one half is to be bestowed in publique uses the other upon the 
Informer.” 
bh.—The Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas (L.) Sch.= C. viridis T. and 
; S.). See p. 448.* 
FIGuRE 47. 
At the present time this is much more common than either of the 
other species and is still taken in small numbers, for the market, by 
the turtle fishers of St. David’s Island, as described in a former 
chapter (p. 448). Those taken in recent years are nearly all young 
or half-grown specimens, seldom weighing more than 70 or 80 
pounds, though sometimes 150 pounds or more. They have not 
been known to breed on the Bermuda shores for more than two 
hundred years, so far as I can learn. Therefore all that are captured 
here come northward from the West Indies in the Gulf Stream. 
In the West Indies they are believed to reach the weight of 15 to 
20 pounds the first year; those weighing 80 to 100 pounds are 
thought to be three or four years old (Garman). 
In the West Indies green turtles have been taken weighing 850 
pounds and even 1000 pounds, but such giants are now very rare, 
* Good accounts of the sea-turtles are given by Holbrook, North American 
Herpetology, ii, 1849: L. Agassiz, Contributions to the Nat. Hist. of the United 
States, ii, 1857; S. Garman, Bull. U. S. Nat. Museum, No. 25, pp. 287-308, 
1884 (with*detailed synonymy); F. W. True, The Fisheries and Fishery Indus- 
tries of the United States, sec. ii, p. 147, 1884. 
