REPTILES OF MASSACHUSETTS. 217 



S. coriacea. Lin. The Leather Tortoise. 

 Plate IV. 



Pennant's British Zoology, vol. iii, p. 7, et fig. 

 Shaw's Gen. Zoology, vol. iii. p. 77, et fig. 

 Phil. Trans, vol. Ixi. pt. 1. p. 271, et fig. 

 Dutn et liibr. Hist. Nat. des Kept. t. ii. p. 5G1. 



The only specimen I have heard of having been seen on 

 the coast of the United States, was taken asleep on the surface 

 of tlie water in Massachusetts Bay. in the year 1824, and being 

 brought to Boston, was purchased by Mr. Greenwood of the 

 New England Museum, of the captors, for two hundred dollars, 

 and placed in this institution, where it still remains. The 

 naturalist may judge of the great rarity of this species from the 

 following observations by Dumeril and Bibron, in their ^' Er- 

 pctologie generale ou Histoire Naturelle complete des Reptiles ;^^ 

 " This species is very rare ; it inhabits the Mediterranean, 

 and the Atlantic ocean. Rondelet speaks of a ^' Sphargis luth" 

 five cubits long, which was taken at Frontignon : Amoreux 

 described another which was captured in the harbor of Cette ; 

 and in 1729 a third was taken at the mouth of the Loire, 

 which was described by Delafout in the " Memoires de V 

 Academie des Sciences J^ Borlase has given a bad figure of a 

 ^' Sphargis luth,^' which was taken in 1756 upon the coast of 

 Cornwall, in England." 



The specimen in the New England Museum presents the 

 following characters : Evtire length eighty-five inches ,• widest 

 part, fourteen inches ; back of the head, thirty-four inches ; 

 greatest depth fourteen inches. The body is covered above, 

 by a dark brown shield, fifty-seven inches in length, of a firm 

 leathery texture, which is divided into furrows by seven lon- 

 gitudinal elevated ridges ; all these ridges are noduled, resem- 

 bling the vertebral column ; the dorsal ridge runs the whole 

 length of the shell ; those on the side, next the dorsum, com- 

 mence one inch and a half further forwards than the dorsal 

 ridge, and within sixteen inches of the posterior extremity of 

 28 



