JIARSH TORTOISE. 



324 THE TKOriCAL WOULD. 



down with a loud hiss and heavy noise as if touched by 

 lightning. He theii mounted upon their back, and on giving 

 them a smart slap or two on the hind part of their carapace, 

 they rose and leisurely proceeded with their learned freight, 

 the author of ' Origin of Species ' finding it very difficult to 

 maintain his equilibrium on this strange beast of burthen. 



It is a remarkable fact, that though the land-tortoises are 

 scattered in many places over the warmer regions of the globe, 

 and even extend as far as Patagonia'and the south of Europe, 

 yet not a single one has hitherto been found in Australia, 

 where, equally strange to say, no indigenous monkey exists. 

 The marsh tortoises, or EmydcE^ have their chief seat in 

 tropical America and the Indian 

 Archipelago, where an abundance of 

 ■ swamps, lagoons, lakes, pools, and 

 gently-flowing rivers favours the in- 

 crease of their numbers. In the 

 (EMYs picTA.r month of September, as soon as the 



sand-banks begin to be uncovered, the females deposit their 

 eggs, scraping hollows of a considerable depth, covering them 

 over carefully, smoothing and beating down the sand, and then 

 walking across and across the place in various directions, for 

 the purpose of concealment. There are such numbers of them, 

 that some beaches are almost one mass of eggs beneath the 

 surface, and here the Indians come to make oil. A canoe is 

 filled with the eggs, which are all broken and mashed up 

 together. The oil rises to the top, and is skimmed off and 

 boiled, when it will keep, and is used both for light and for 

 cooking. During this operation, the neighbouring strand 

 swarms with carrion vultures, and the smell of the offal attracts 

 also a number of alligators, eager to come in for their share of 

 the feast. Millions of eggs are thus annually destroyed, and of 

 those that remain a very small portion only arrives at maturity. 

 When the young tortoises issue from the egg and run to the 

 water, many enemies are awaiting them. Great alligators open 

 theif jaws, and swallow them by hundreds ; the jaguars and the 

 smaller felidse from the forest come to feed upon them ; eagles 

 and buzzards and the great wood ibises attend the feast, and 

 when they have escaped all these, there are many ravenous 

 fishes w^hich seize them in the stream. 



