AN IRRESISTIBLE INSTINCT. 349 



bungtotte during the season when they came to deposit 

 their eggs. Hence arose the trade in tortoise-shell at 

 Point de Galle, where the Moors still manufacture it into 

 articles of ornament ; but the shell they employ is almost 

 entirely imported from the Maldives. 



If the shell is taken from the animal after the latter's 

 death and decomposition, its colour becomes clouded and 

 milky. Hence the natives adopt the barbarous expedient 

 of seizing the turtles when they come ashore to lay their 

 eggs, and suspending them over fires until heat frees 

 the plates on the dorsal shield from the bone of the cara- 

 pace, after which the cerature is permitted to escape to 

 the water. In illustration of the irresistible force of in- 

 stinct at the period of breeding, Sir Emerson Tennerit 

 mentions that the identical tortoise is believed to return 

 repeatedly to the same spot, though at each visit she is 

 subjected to a renewal of this torture. In 1826, Mr. 

 Bennett records, that a hawksbill was captured near 

 Hambungtotte, with a ring attached to one of its fins 

 which had been placed there by a Dutch officer thirty 

 years before, in order to establish the fact of these 

 periodical visits to the same beach. 



We are told that at Celebes, which exports the finest 

 tortoise-shell to China, the natives kill the turtle by blows 

 on the head, and immerse the shell in boiling water to 

 detach the plates. It is the unskilful only who resort to 

 dry heat ; a process which frequently destroys, or injures 

 the shell. 



An authority already quoted records a curious and in- 

 teresting illustration of instinct in the turtle, when about 

 to deposit her eggs. As if conscious that to go and re- 

 turn by the same line across the sandy beach would en- 



