ORDER CHELONIA. 7^ 



colours were of a lively yellow. The breast-plate was white, 

 the head marked with yellow points, and the feet adorned 

 with reddish striae. Schoepff was assured that this tortoise 

 was aquatic ; that during summer it inhabits banks of earth, 

 and that it conceals itself from the month of October in 

 marshy places to pass the winter. 



M. Daudin gives two varieties of the painted tortoise. The 

 cinereous tortoise is only a young picta. 



Among the more rare specimens of emys in the British 

 Museum, are the following : 



The Lake Erie tortoise ; Emys geographica of Say and 

 Leseur. It is olive-brown, with numerous narrow dark- 

 edged open lines on the back and margin ; beneath it is yellow, 

 with a narrow black line on the sutures of the sternal plates. 

 The shell is ovate, smooth, and convex, with the back bluntly 

 carinated ; the sternal-plate, sterno-costal suture, and the mar- 

 gin, have irregular lines of diiferent breadths ; the head and 

 limbs have numerous narrow lines, and there is a subtrian- 

 gular patch on each temple. Its name sufficiently indicates 

 its locality. 



The Emys occipitatis, so named by Mr. Gray, appears to 

 be hitherto unnoticed. That gentleman thus describes it : — 

 Shell, ovate oblong, smooth, rather convex, and very ob- 

 scurely and bluntly keeled, doubly indented behind ; dark 

 brown, varied with broad and narrow pale lines ; those of the 

 vertebral plates somewhat ringed, diverging on the costal 

 ala; the margin has a series of square, pale-ringed black 

 spots, placed on the suture, and each spot occupying half a 

 plate. The first vertebral plate squarish ; the others broad, 

 hexangular ; palish yellow, with a large black ring on each 

 plate, with a blackish eye-like spot on each suture of the 

 marginal plate, and a long ring-formed spot at each end of 

 the sterno-costal suture. 



In Mr. Bell's collection, and, we believe, also in that of the 



