THE TURTLE. 



345 



the place ; and those must be accustomed to 

 the search to make the discovery. When the 

 turtle has done laying, she returns to the sea, 

 and leaves her eggs to be hatched by the heat 

 of the sun. At the end of fifteen days she 

 lays about the same number of eggs again ; 

 and at the end of another fifteen days she 

 repeats the same ; three times in all, using 

 the same precautions every time for safety. 



In about twenty-four or twenty-five days 

 after laying, the eggs are hatched by the heat 

 of the sun ; and the young turtles being about 

 as big as quails, are seen bursting from the 

 sand, as if earth-born, and running directly 

 to the sea, with instinct only for their guide : 

 but, to their great misfortune, it often happens 

 that, their strength being small, the surges of 

 the sea, for some few days, beat them back 

 upon the shore. Thus exposed, they remain 

 a prey to thousands of birds that then haunt 

 the coast ; and these stooping down upon them 

 carry off the greatest part, and sometimes the 

 whole brood, before they have strength suf- 

 ficient to withstand the waves, or dive to the 

 bottom. Helbigius informs us, that they have 

 still another enemy to fear, which is no other 

 than the parent that produces them, that waits 

 for their arrival at the edge of the deep, and 

 devours as many as she can. 1 This circum- 

 stance, however, demands further confirma- 

 tion ; though nothing is more certain than 

 that the crocodile acts in the same unnatural 

 manner. 



When the turtles have done laying, they 

 then return to their accustomed places of feed- 

 ing. Upon their outset to the shore where 

 they breed, they are always fat and healthy ; 

 but upon their return, they are weak, lean, 

 and unfit to be eaten. They are seldom, 

 therefore, molested upon their retreat ; but the 

 great art is to seize them when arrived, or to 

 intercept their arrival. In these uninhabited 

 islands, to which the green turtle chiefly 

 resorts, the men that go to take them land 

 about night-fall, and without making any 

 noise (for these animals, though without any 

 external opening of the ear, hear very dis- 

 tinctly, there being an auditory conduit that 

 opens into the mouth,) lie close while they see 

 the female turtle coming on shore. They let 

 her proceed to her greatest distance from the 

 sea ; and then, when she is most busily em- 

 ployed in scratching a hole in the sand, they 

 sally out and surprise her. Their manner 

 is to turn her upon her back, which utterly 

 incapacitates her from movinsr ; and yet as the 

 creature is very strong, and struggles very 

 hard, two men find it no easy matter to lay 

 her over. When thus secured they go to the 



1 This account of the turtle's preying upon its young 

 is incorrect. 

 VOL. n 



next ; and in this manner, in less than 

 three hours, they have been known to turn 

 forty or fifty turtles, each of which weighs 

 from a hundred and fifty to two hundred 

 pounds. Labat assures us, tliat when the 

 animal is in this helpless situation, it is 

 heard to sigh very heavily, and even to shed 

 tears. 



At present, from the great appetite that 

 man has discovered for this animal, they are 

 not only thinned in their numbers, but are 

 also grown much more shy. There are several 

 other ways, therefore, contrived for taking 

 them. 2 One is, to seize them when coupled 



a Audubon, in his Ornithological Biography, has a 

 chapter, headed The Turtlers, in which he gives an in* 

 teresting account of the habits of turtles, and the methods 

 of taking them. " The Tortugas," he says, " are a group 

 of islands lying about eighty miles from Key West, and the 

 last of those that seem to defend the peninsula of the 

 Floridas. They consist of five or six extremely low un- 

 inhabitable banks formed of shelly sand, and are resorted 

 to principally by that class of men called Wreckers and 

 Turtlers. Between these islands are deep channels, 

 which, although extremely intricate, are well known to 

 those adventurers, as well as to the commanders of the 

 revenue cutters, whose duties call them to that danger- 

 ous coast. The great coral reef or wall lies about eight 

 miles from these inhospitable isles, in the direction of 

 the Gulf, and on it many an ignorant or careless navi- 

 gator has suffered shipwreck. The whole ground around 

 them is densely covered with corals, sea-fans, and other 

 productions of the deep, amid which crawl innumerable 

 testaceous animals, while shoals of curious and beautiful 

 fishes fill the limpid waters above them. Turtles cf di- 

 ferent species resort to these banks, to deposit their eggs 

 in the burning sand, and clouds of sea-fowl arrive every 

 spring for the same purpose. These are followed by 

 persons called 'Eggers,' who, when their cargoes are 

 completed, sail to distant markets, to exchange their ill- 

 gotten ware for a portion of that gold, on the acquisicion 

 of which all men seem bent. 



" But the Tortugas are not the only breeding places 

 of the turtles; these animals, on the contrary, frequent 

 many other keys, as well as various parts of the coast of 

 the mainland. There are four different species, which are 

 known by the names of the green turtle, the hawksbill 

 turtle, the loggerhead turtle, and the trunk turtle. The 

 first is considered the best as an article of food, in which 

 capacity it is well known to most epicures. It approaches 

 the shores, and enters the bays, inlets, and rivers, early 

 in the month of April, after having spent the winter in 

 the deep waters. It deposits its eggs in convenient 

 places, at two different times in May, and once again in 

 June. The first deposit is the largest, and the last the 

 least, the total quantity being at an average about two 

 hundred and forty. The hawksbill turtle, whose shell is 

 so valuable as an article of commerce, being used for 

 various purposes in the arts, is the next with respect to 

 the quality of its flesh. It resorts to the outer keys only, 

 where it deposits its eggs in two sets, first in July, and 

 again in August, although it 'crawls' the beaches oi 

 these keys much earlier in the season, as if to look for 

 a safe place. The average number of its eggs is about 

 three hundred. The loggerhead visits the Tortugas in 

 April, and lays from that period until late in June 

 three sets of eggs, each set averaging a hundred and 

 seventy. The trunk turtle, which is sometimes of au 

 enormous size, and which has a pouch like a pelican, 

 reaches the shores latest. The shell and flesh are so 

 soft that one may push his finger into them, almost as 

 2 x 



