SHORT STUDIES OF TURTLES. 2T5 



from the possibility of obtaining food, and were freely sup- 

 plied with fresh water. In such a case general skin-res- 

 piration must necessarily take the place of lung-respira- 

 tion." By experiment I have been able to determine 

 that a snapper can remain twenty-one days "beneath run- 

 ning water without food, and yet not appear to have 

 suffered ; although its appetite was perfectly wonderful 

 when the creature was relieved from its confined and 

 submerged quarters. 



Considering, then, the facts, that one of these species 

 has been known to take a baited hook in midwinter, and 

 that individuals of this same or another species have been 

 found to eat of fishes that were entangled in a net set be- 

 neath the ice, and bearing in mind that they have been 

 found in quite an active state in shallow but open waters 

 even in midwinter, it is safe to assert that certain of our 

 turtles do not regularly hibernate from autumn until 

 spring, as has been generally supposed ; the snappers, the 

 musk-turtles, and the "mud-diggers," furnishing the 

 prominent exceptions to the rule. 



