148 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



otiier of the contestants, and the battle, after the brutal jaws have 

 once clenched, is sometimes of several days' duration. 



Leeches, too, are frequently found in some numbers firmly at- 

 tached to the crevices or joinings of the compartments or plates of 

 the turtle's composite shell. These leeches are sometimes found 

 preying on the chelone to the number of eight, ten or twelve, and 

 are generally in such situations of the host's body as are inacces- 

 sible to its claws or mouth. 



The female clielonc serpentaria comes forth from its native bog 

 or shallow mud-pool to some neighboring sand-ridge or sunn}^ bank 

 to lay its twenty or more eggs, which are deposited in a shallow 

 cavity, excavated by the parent in the loam, sand or gravel.- 

 These are slightly covered and are soon hatched by the warmth of 

 the sun's midsummer rays. 



The progeny onlj^ attain a size but little larger than the diam- 

 eter of a silver dollar by the time the cold weather of late autumn 

 sets in, yet they seem to be left to forage for themselves from the 

 time they leave the egg. Their food consists chiefly of worms, 

 aquatic larvse and small fishes. 



Like the common mud-turtle or terrapin they hybernate in the 

 soft mud, at a depth of from one to two feet, in the bed or near 

 to the shore of ditches, undrained morasses and stagnant ponds. 



Several communities of these terrapin were disinterred by an 

 acquaintance of mine on the 2nd of October, 1905. These were 

 associated to the number of five to seven in each group, and were^ 

 embedded in a stratum of rather tenacious mud in a small brook, 

 near here, the mud being covered by a depth of ten or twelve 

 inches of water which had a slight current. This arrangement 

 was evidently designed to be the winter abode of these amphibious 

 lizards. 



It is an interesting sight to watch a group of these terrapins, 

 reposing side by side, on a floating log or other floating wreckage, 

 motionless, patient and silent, in the warm sunny rays of an Aug- 

 ust noon— a scene of sociability and fraternity reminding one, as 

 an acquaintance once remarked, of the unanimity and dreaminess 



