SOMERSETSHIRE REPTILES, 117 
Professor Bell, in his “ British Reptiles,” says that “the 
single and purely accidental occurrence of a bird or a fish, 
within the range of our guns or our nets, had always con- 
stituted the wanderer fair game to our Faunists ; I have 
therefore determined to avail myself of the means thus 
offered me, of adding to our Fauna the Hawk’s-bill Turtle 
and the Trunk Turtle, the two stray species which have 
been accidentally found on our coast.” My inducements 
for celaiming the Hawk’s-bill Turtle for our Fauna of 
Somersetshire are irresistible; namely, Professor Bells 
example; the following letter from my departed friend, 
Mr. Anstice, written to me many years ago; and the in- 
teresting and very apposite observations on this subject by 
Sir Charles Lyell, in the second volume of his “ Princi- 
ples of Geology.” 
Mr. Anstice says : “I know the circumstance of the 
Turtle being caught in the river Parret. It is not very 
probable I think, that it was assisted hither by our trading 
vessels from abroad. I should think they may sometimes 
accompany the intertropical seed-vessels and shell-fish that 
are yearly brought to our channel, and to the coasts of 
Scotland and Ireland, by the gulf stream. Ihave seen 
the species in question on the coast of Portugal, and once, 
I remember, in a winter month and a gale of wind ; and 
why should they not, therefore, take an excursion across 
the Bay of Biscay occasionally in summer time ?” 
The following are Mr. Lyell’s coincident remarks : 
“Turtles migrate in large droves from one part of the 
ocean to another, during the ovipositing season. Dr. 
Fleming mentions that an individual of the Hawk’s-bill 
Turtle has been taken on one ofthe West Zetland islands ; 
and according to Sebbald, the same animal came into 
Orkney; another was taken in the Severn, in 1774, accor- 
ding to Turton.” 
