2OO Life and Immortality. 



are of a bronze, blackish green, or deep-brown color, and the 

 shells are beautifully marked, glossy, ridged, or carved, and 

 made up of closely-united, many-sided plates, arranged 

 upon a thickened, lighter-colored and apparently uniform 

 bony plate, which is capable of being separated into many 

 independent pieces. The shell, or epidermic covering, is 

 not brittle and lime-like, as the shells of all mollusks are, but 

 *is of the nature of horn. In general the plastron is of a 

 lighter color than the carapace, being light-brown, yellow or 

 cream, with yellowish lines dividing the plates, and with 

 bordering bands of red, yellow and purple. The upper 

 plate is usually of a very dark color, marked and lined with 

 darker and lighter tints, and often displaying a bevelled 

 yellow edge. Chrysemys picta, the Painted Turtle, receives 

 his name from the beauty of his many-colored shell, while 

 the Spotted Turtle, Nanemys guttatus, which is often called 

 the Wood Turtle, is distinguished by the round yellow 

 spots that are regularly distributed over his dark-colored 

 carapace. 



But of all our turtles none is so well known or so interest- 

 ing in his ways as the Common Box Tortoise Cistudo 

 clausa. He affects dry woods, and dislikes the water, and is 

 a long-lived creature, some individuals having been known 

 to live more than a hundred years. Box Tortoises in confine- 

 ment have been found to eat meat, insects and bread and 

 milk from the hand, but if berries were put into their mouths 

 they wiped them out in a very funny manner with their front 

 feet, which they used after the fashion of a hand. 



When foraging in the woods, especially during the rainy 

 season, at which time manifold varieties of fungi prevail, they 

 make their meals largely upon these plants. We have seen 

 a huge toadstool that had been gnawed off so evenly, the 

 central pillar only being left intact, that appeared as though 

 it had been cut away by a knife. This had been the work of 

 the Box Tortoise, for on looking around we soon descried, 

 moving leisurely over the leaf-strewn earth, the creature 



