5W 'Species of North American Tortoises. 



III. p. 263. &. II. Trionyx spiniferus, (spiiiifer) Le Sueur, 

 Memoires du Museum d'histoire naturelle, aim. 8. fascic. 4, p. 

 267. Soft-shelled turtle, vulg. 



Shell oval, entire, very much depressed, bony in the mid- 

 dle, cartilaginous on the sides, dusky, irregularly mixed with 

 brown, furnished on the fore part of the margin with thickly 

 set round and pointed tubercles, and on the disc with short 

 longitudinal raised and tuberculated lines, which in young 

 ones are only perceptible on the hind part ; sternum white, 

 entire, oval and ample on the fore part and extending beyond 

 4he shell, bony only in the middle, hind part oval, suddenly 

 contracting from the wings, reaching but half way to the 

 end of the shell and bony to the edge. Skin above cinereous 

 brown or brownish, dusky, in some spotted with darker, beneath 

 white. Head large, tapering very much to the nose, which is 

 extended, cylindric, and flexile : eyes contiguous ; irids yel- 

 low, with a longitudinal black stripe through the middle ; mouth 

 naked before, (that is to say, the lips not reaching to the front 

 of the mouth) furnished with broad, revolute opposite lips ; 

 neck very long ; legs large ; feet five-toed, palmate, the web 

 extending along the hinder side of each leg as far as the first 

 joint, that on the fore legs furnished with two processes like 

 false toes, on the hind legs with one ; fore legs with three broad 

 and sharp scales on the upper and anterior, and two oblong 

 tubercles on the posterior edge. Tail thick, short, not extend- 

 ing beyond the shell ; vent on the tail, not more than half an 

 inch from its point. 



Length of the shell two feet ; breadth one foot and a half ; 

 length of the head and neck, seventeen inches. 



The young ones are nearly round, paler coloured, and 

 generally marked on the back with subocellate spots of dusky. 



Inhabit in the rivers of Georgia and Florida, and although 

 not found in any of the streams which empty immediately into 

 the Atlantic ocean to the northward of Savannah, they abound 

 in all those which run into the Mississippi. The fact of two 



