294 REPTILES OF BERMUDA. 
beach, the turtles sharing the same fate as the bird before mentioned, 
being buried whilst depositing their eggs. Colonel Nelson was informed 
by an eye-witness that the dimensions of the skeletons of these animals 
were 9 feet in length by 7 in breadth.” It is unfortunate that we do 
not know the species of turtle to which these bones belonged. There 
is room for difference of opinion in regard to the time of the turtle’s 
interment. During storms bodies that have been thrown upon the 
beach by the waves are sometimes buried to considerable depths by 
the sand. A short time after the “ epidemic” that was so fatal to the 
fishes on the western coast of Florida, in the fall of 1878, I saw the 
bodies of a number of large turtles, probably killed by the same cause, 
floating along with the myriads of dead fishes in the edge of the Gulf 
Stream. A storm from a particular direction might have heaped up 
and buried that refuse of death upon the windward shore of some land, 
perhaps to be unearthed again by geologists of the future who would 
reckon the age of that stratum in millions of years. 
The turtles of the Bermudas are of species more abundant in the 
West Indies and around the shores of the Caribbean and the Gulf of 
Mexico. Consequently I have not hesitated to gather in those localities, 
where it was more accessible, information concerning these creatures 
for use in an account of Bermuda reptiles. There is little doubt that 
turtles from the West Indies visit the Bermudas. The sea turtles are 
capable of enduring such an amount of hunger and fatigue, and are 
possessed of such powerful muscular organization, that, aided by the 
tides and currents, they perform journeys of almost incrediblelength. It 
is not avery rare occurrence that they are met with in mid-ocean. Those 
taken on the coasts of England are supposed to have crossed the At- 
lantic with the help of the Gulf Stream. Some herpetologists think it 
likely that turtles cross the Atlantic and enter the Mediterranean. The 
Leatherback and Loggerhead are the most erratic. Though their proper 
home may be said to extend not more than 35° on each side of the 
equator, they are found straggling as many as 15° farther to the north 
or south. If specimens enter the Atlantic from the other oceans it is 
most likely to be by way of the Cape of Good Hope, where the currents 
would seem to favor the passage. However, there is only one case in 
which there is any doubt, that of Sphargis, of which specimens from 
the different oceans are so much alike that writers are still undecided 
whether there is more than one species. Certain respects in which the 
Pacific “'Trunkbacks” differ from those of the Atlantic have induced 
