86 CLASS REPTILIA. 



Every year many vessels proceed to the Cape Verd Islands 

 to Take in their cargo of these animals, and salt them, to 

 transport them into America. Those consumed in the Isle 

 of France come from the Sechelles Islands. 



From the fat of the turtle oil may be derived for burning. 

 A large one will furnish thirty pints or more. 



When these tortoises are on land, they are taken by turn- 

 ing them on their backs, either with the hands, or, if they are 

 too heavy and bulky, with stakes or levers. They are left 

 in this position for a greater or less length of time. Accord- 

 ing to Pere Labat, they may be kept alive in this way for 

 fifteen or twenty days provided care be taken to wet them 

 with sea-water four or five times every day. They grow 

 very thin, however, under this kind of discipline. 



In the midst of the ocean these tortoises are caught by the 

 harpoon. Lord Anson reports that, in some parts of the 

 South Sea, hardy divers will get under them when they are 

 asleep, seize them by the lower part of the carapace, and 

 support them long enough on the water to be enabled to 

 hoist tliern into a boat. M. Laborde, a physician of Cayenne, 

 mentions that they are caught in nets. But the most extra- 

 ordinary mode of catcliing them is by means of a fish of 

 the genus Echeneis. In 1809, when Mr. H. Salt was at 

 Mozambique, having received a present of one of these 

 fish, all the inhabitants assured him that they were wont to 

 employ it, by fastening it with a cord to a boat, and that it 

 fixed itself by the head to the breast-plate of the first tortoise 

 it met, with so much force, that the latter could not escape. 

 Comraerson has likewise reported something of the same kind. 



The shell of this turtle is too thin to be applicable to the 

 same purposes as that of the imbricated turtle, of which we 

 shall presently speak. 



It appears that the nature of the sea tortoises was very 

 little understood by the Europeans until after the middle of 



