Vol. X, No. 5.] The Worship of Mud-Turtles. 133 



[N.S.] 



external characters of this species appears to have been based on 

 specimens either dried or preserved in spirit, and as nothing 

 whatever has hitherto been known of its habits, I give here some 

 notes on those I saw alive in 1912. 



They live in a large pond attached to the shrine of Sultan 

 Bagu Bastan (a saint who is said to have lived in the eighteenth 

 century) about five miles from the town of Chittagong. The 

 Mahommedans will neither kill them nor permit them to be 

 killed ; they believe that they are in some way connected with 

 the saint. Their tank is surrounded by several flights of steps 

 leading down to a platform a few inches under water, and 

 the turtles are so tame that they come to feed when called, 

 placing their fore feet on the edge of the platform or even 

 climbing bodily upon it and stretching their necks out of the 

 water. The largest are tamer than the smaller ones. Some 

 even allowed us to touch them, and eat pieces of chicken from 

 wooden screwers held in our hands. They greatly preferred 

 the chicken to bananas, which as a rule (but not always) they 

 rejected. The only sound they emitted was a low hiss. When 

 undisturbed they remained at the bottom of the pond half buried 

 in mud. A man connected with the shrine told us that they left 

 the water every evening and climbed a small hill, on which they 

 slept. He said that they laid their eggs on the same hill 

 during the fl rains ". People sometimes found dead turtles and 

 buried them. The oldest individual were said to be about 

 150 years old. 



The largest turtles had a carapace at least 3 feet long and 

 of extraordinarily massive appearance. This was greatly in- 

 creased by the fact that there was always a deep longitudinal 

 groove in the middle line of the dorsal surface, at any rate on 

 the posterior part. The skin above the base of the neck and 

 the fore-limbs was much wrinkled and swollen, especially in 

 old individuals, and as some of the wrinkles ran at right angles 

 to others, the stain had a markedly tubercular appearance. 

 The carapace itself was almost smooth, bearing only a few 

 indistinct prominences posteriorly. The heads of very large 

 turtles was much broader, and the snouts blunter, than those of 

 well-grown but not very large individuals. 



The normal colouration of well-grown turtles was as fol- 

 lows ; — Dorsal surface of carapace copper-brown indistinctly 

 marbled with a darker shade and a little iridescent in some 

 lights when wet; ty.il, limbs and neck apparently dark clay- 

 colour but always covered with mud ; top and sides of head 

 bright glaucous green, taking a yellowish tinge above the eyes 

 and nostrils and boldly reticulated with black or very dark 

 green, the reticulation being as a rule closer on the vertex and 

 snout than between the eyes. The coppery colour of the cara- 

 pace was brightest in half-grown individuals. In some such 

 individuals the black markings of the head already predomin- 



