90 



LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



the people of Rome would come drunk into the 

 senate-house, and so consult of the affaires of the 

 commonwealth." * Man is an imitative animal ; 

 and the debates in our own houses of parliament 

 occasionally exhibit symptoms that some of our 

 legislators have dined, though they may not have 

 exactly fulfilled that Greek symposial law that 

 required the boon companion not to quit his cups 

 till the morning star arose. Even in these degen- 

 erate days, there are not wanting examples of 

 those who have bid the liquid ruby flow copiously. 

 Quin frequently carried off six good bottles of 

 claret under his belt, after all the spirituous and 

 vinous accompaniments of a turtle dinner. 



But neither calipash nor calipee gratified the 

 palates of the ancient Romans. The hammer of 

 Charon descended upon the Apicii and Lucullus 

 centuries before the Nereids, who sport under the 

 beams of the western star, sent the delicious offer- 

 ing to the epicures of the old world, although the 

 sea-nymphs of the East furnished the luxurious 

 with an ornament for their tables, couches, and 

 the pillars of their houses, from another species. f 

 We can almost hear the lamentations of the fidg- 

 ety, niggardly, self-tormenting Mamurra, poor in 

 the midst of his riches, who 



Testudineum mensus quater hexaclinon 

 Ingemuit citro nou satis esse suo.t 



The consumption of tortoise shell at Rome for 

 ornamental purposes must have been very great ; 

 the very door-posts of the rich were inlaid with 



M 



The supply, occasionally, must have been more 

 than equal to the demand, if we may believe Vel- 

 leius Paterculus, who relates that, when Caesar 

 took Alexandria, the magazines were so rich in 

 tortoise shell that he proposed to make that highly- 

 prized ornament a principal feature in his African 

 triumph. 



The first man that invented the cutting of tor- 

 toise shells into thin plates, therewith to seele beds, 

 tables, cupbords, and presses, was Carbilius Pollio, 

 a man very ingenious and inventive of such toies, 

 serving to riot and superfluous expense. || 



* Jonston. t Chelone imbricata. 



t Martial, Epig. ix. 60. Juvenal also alludes to the 

 .uxury in his eleventh satire: 



Nemo inter curas et seria duxit habendum, 

 Qualis in Oceani fluctu testudo nataret, 

 Clarum Trojugenis factura, ac nobile fulcrum. 



Familiar as is the passage, we cannot mar the beauty 

 of the Mantuan's verse by giving the sixth line alone: 

 O Fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint 

 Agricolas ! quibus ipsa procul discordihus armis, 

 Fundit humo facilem victum justissima tellus. 

 Si non ingentem foribus domus alia superbis 

 Mane salulantum totis vomit aedihus undam ; 

 Ncc varios inhiant pulchr& testudine pastes, 

 Inhisasque auro vestes, Ephyreiaque aera ; 

 Alba neque Assvrio fucalur lana veneno, 

 Nee casia liquid! corrmnpitur usus olivi: 

 At secura quies, et nescia fallere vita, 

 Dives opum variarum, atlatis otia fundis, 

 Speluncae, vivique lacus, at frigida Tempe, 

 Mugitusque bourn, mollesque sub arbore somni 

 Non absunt. 



H Holland's Pliny. And again, "Cornelius Nepos 

 writeth, that before the victory of Sylla, who defeated 



The carapace entire was frequently used for a 

 cradle and a bath for young children ; nor did the 

 warrior disdain it as a shield. 



The size to which some of the species grew 

 was enormous, if we are to believe ^Elian, Pliny, 

 Diodorus, and others. 



There he found Tortoises in the Indian sea so 

 great, that one only shel of them is sufficient for 

 the roufe of a dwelling house. And among the 

 Islands principally in the Red Sea, they use Tor- 

 toise shells for boats and wherries upon the water. 



And, again, (book vi. c. 22,) Pliny, writing of 

 the inhabitants of the Island of Taprobane, states 

 that, 



They take also a great pleasure and delight in 

 fishing, and especially in taking of tortoisses ; and 

 so great they are found there, that one of their 

 shels will serve to cover an house : and so the in- 

 habitants do employ them instead of roufes. 



The largest skull of a turtle I ever saw is in 

 the noble museum of the Royal College of Sur- 

 geons of England. It is the cranium of a Log- 

 gerhead Turtle, (Chelone. caouanna,) and is of the 

 following portentous dimensions : 



Ft. In. Lin, 

 Length, in a straight line from the back \ 



margin of the mastoid to the fore end > 13 6 



of the premaxillary, . . . . ) 



Breadth, in a straight line, .... 11 6 



Height, including lower jaw, ... 90 



Circumference (horizontal,) .... 3 40 



And now a few words on the natural history 

 and capture of some of these Thalassians ; and 

 first, of the delicate species, the greenish color of 

 whose fat gives it one of its names, and is derived 

 from the turtle-grass on which it principally feeds 

 the green turtle, Tortue franche of our pseudo- 

 republican neighbors ; Testudo mydas, Linn.; Che- 

 lone mydas of more modern zoologists. 



The Atlantic Ocean and the West Indian seas 

 are enriched with this luscious esculent. 



Turtle, (tortoises,) writes Sir Hans Sloane, are 

 of several sorts; those of the sea call'd green Tur- 

 tle, from their fats being of that colour, feed on 

 conches or shell fish, are very good victuals, and 

 sustain a great many, especially of the poorer sort 

 of the Island. They are brought in sloops, as the 

 season is for breeding or feeding, from the Cay- 

 manes, or south Cayes of Cuba, in which forty 

 sloops, part of one hundred and eighty, belonging 

 to Port Royal, are always imployed. They are 

 worth fifteen shillings apiece, best when with egg, 

 and brought or put into pens, or palisadoed places, 

 in the harbor of Port Royal, whence they are taken 



Marius, VJTO dining tables, and no more there were 

 throughout Rome, all of silver. Fenestella saiih, that in 

 his time (and he died the last yere of the reigne of Ty- 

 berius Cassar the emperor) men began to bestow silver 

 upon their cupboords and side livery tables: and even 

 then also (by his saying) tortoise worke came in request, 

 and was much used. Howbeit, somewhat before his 

 daies, he writeth, that those cupboords were of wood, 

 round and solid, of one entire piece, and not much bigger 

 than the tables whereupon men eat their meat ; but when 

 hee was_ a young boy, they were foure square, and of many 

 peeces joyned together ; and then they began to be covered 

 over with thin boords or painels, either of maple or citron 

 wood." So that, after all, this is not the only age of 

 veneer. 



