56 CLASS REPTILIA. 



Tortoises, of all the subdivisions of this order, can remain 

 a long time without eating. Marine tortoises have been on 

 board vessels for many months without food, before they 

 were delivered up to the dealers and cooks. Those sent 

 from Algiers to Paris for the use of apothecaries, arrive there 

 after a fast of two or three months, and often remain there 

 as long in the same condition before they are made use of. 

 Blasius mentions one that remained at his house ten months 

 without taking any nourishment. All those tortoises which 

 inhabit the countries beyond the tropics, pass annually four 

 or six months buried in the mud of marshes or in sand hills, 

 and of course without eating. Nature has accorded to them, 

 as she has to other hybernating animals, the faculty of accu- 

 mulating, during the summer, an enormous provision of fat, 

 on which they subsist during winter, a period in which, as 

 we have already seen, their loss of substance amounts almost 

 to nothing. 



In India and America, the children often amuse themselves 

 by mounting on the backs of tortoises, and being thus carried 

 about. Some of these animals can thus carry a great many, 

 and walk as fast as if they had no burthen. But this amuse- 

 ment soon becomes very fatiguing to these youngsters, because 

 the tortoise cannot advance one of its paws without raising 

 the corresponding side of the carapace, which occasions very 

 violent shocks, and no small danger of being overturned to 

 the riders, if they are not perpetually on their guard. 



Pliny and Diodorus Siculus have informed us, that entire 

 people made use of the scales of marine tortoises to shelter 

 them from the inclemency of the weather, or to form boats, 

 &c. They are employed at the present day in many places 

 for similar objects. Even in the European colonies they are 

 frequently used for domestic purposes, such as holding the 

 drink or food of cattle, washing children, &c. They form a 

 large dish, the shape of which is not ugly, but which can- 



