172 CHELONIANS. 



toises proceed in depositing their eggs nor is less precaution 

 taken by the Sea Tortoise. The females, accompanied by the 

 males, traverse several hundreds of miles of sea in order to deposit 

 their eggs in some favoured locality. Other females resort, year 

 after year, almost to a day, to the sandy shore of some desert isle, 

 where they drag themselves ashore during the night, sufficiently 

 inland to be safe from the tide. In some such spot, using their 

 hind feet by way of a shovel, they excavate holes about thirty 

 inches deep. Here they lay frequently a hundred eggs, covering 

 them up afterwards with the fine sand, levelling the surface, 

 and then returning to sea, leaving the eggs to be hatched by 

 the solar rays. The eggs are round, slightly depressed at both 

 ends, and furnished with a coriaceous shell. From the high tem- 

 perature communicated to the sand-bank, they are hatched in about 

 fifteen days. The females seem to have two or three layings in 

 the season, at intervals of two or three weeks. When the young 

 Turtles are hatched, they are feeble, white, and about the size of 

 frogs, and their instincts lead them at once to the sea. Under 

 the fostering care of their mother, those which have escaped the 

 birds of prey on their way to the sea, and the fishes lying in 

 wait for them, rapidly develop, and attain, under favourable 

 circumstances, an enormous size, some of the Sphargis, or 

 Soft Turtles, having been known to weigh from fifteen to sixteen 

 hundred pounds, while others, whose carapaces measured more 

 than fifteen feet in circumference and seven feet in length, exceeded 

 eighteen hundred pounds. 



Marine Tortoises are met with in herds more or less numerous 

 in all seas, principally towards the torrid zone in the tropical 

 regions, on the shores of the Antilles, in Cuba, Jamaica, St. Do- 

 mingo, the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Indian Ocean. Those occa- 

 sionally found by navigators in the North Atlantic and Mediter- 

 ranean seem to be wanderers separated from some travelling 

 bands. 



Of all reptiles, the Sea Tortoise is the most useful to man. In 

 countries where they are common, and where they attain an 

 enormous size, their flesh is the most healthy and nourishing food, 

 and their carapace serves as a canoe in which the natives paddle 

 along the shores. They even roof their huts with them ; they 



