2454 TORTOISES, TURTLES, AND PLESIOSAURS 



averaged three feet in depth. The whole is regularly parceled out among the 

 Indians, who proceed to work the layer with the regularity of miners. The earth 

 having been removed, the eggs are carried in small baskets to the neighboring en- 

 campment, where they are thrown into long wooden troughs of water. Here they 

 are broken and stirred up with shovels, and the mass then left in the sun till all the 

 oily matter has collected at the surface, whence it is continually ladled off, and 

 taken off to be boiled over a quick fire. The result of this process is a limpid, ino- 

 dorous, and scarcely yellow substance, known as "turtle butter," which can be 

 used for much the same purposes as olive oil. In spite of the enormous quantity of 

 eggs thus taken, numbers are hatched, and Humboldt saw the whole bank of the 

 Orinoco swarming with small tortoises of an inch in diameter, that escaped only 

 with difficulty from the pursuit of the Indian children. All these tortoises are 

 vegetable feeders, and the females greatly exceed the males in size. On the Upper 

 Amazon the large species, according to Bates, is captured either by means of nets 

 or by shooting with arrows. On such occasions, after the net is set in a semicircu- 

 lar form at one extremity of a pool, the rest of the party spread themselves around 

 the swamp at the opposite end, and begin to beat with poles in order to drive the 

 tortoises toward the middle. This process on the occasion referred to ' ' was con- 

 tinued for an hour or more, the beaters gradually drawing nearer to each other, 

 and driving the hosts of animals before them; the number of little snouts con- 

 stantly popping above the surface of the water showing that all was going on well. 

 When they neared the net, the men moved more quickly, shouting and beating 

 with great vigor. The ends of the net were then seized by several strong hands 

 and dragged suddenly forward, bringing them at the same time together, so as to 

 inclose all the booty in a -circle. Every man now leaped into the inclosure, the 

 boats were brought up, and the turtles easily captured by the hand and tossed 

 into them." Altogether, about eighty individuals were captured in the course of 

 twenty minutes or so. In shooting tortoises, the arrow employed has a strong 

 lancet-shaped steel point, fitted to a peg which enters the tip of the shaft. To the 

 latter the peg is secured by a hank of twine some thirty or forty yards in length, 

 and neatly wound round the body of the arrow. When a tortoise is struck, the peg 

 drops out from the shaft, and is carried down by the diving animal, leaving the 

 latter floating on the surface. Thereupon the sportsman paddles up to the arrow, 

 and proceeds to ' ' play ' ' his victim until it can be drawn near to the surface, when 

 it is struck with a second arrow, after which, by the aid of the two cords, it can be 

 safely drawn ashore. In many villages on the Amazon every house has a pond, in 

 which a number of these tortoises are kept for food. 



The other two genera of the family Pelomedusa and Siernotherus 

 differ from the first by the absence of a bony roof to the temporal 

 region of the skull, and likewise by the presence of five claws in both the front- 

 and hind-feet. Whereas, however, the former has the mesoplastral elements of the 

 plastron small and similar to those of the greaved tortoises, in the latter they are 

 as well developed as the other elements of the plastron, meeting in the middle line. 

 Pelomedusa is represented by a single species common to Africa and Madagascar, 

 but of the six species of Sternotherus, five are exclusively African, while the sixth 



