1875.] J. Wood-Mason — Remarks on tlw young of 'Trionyx, 8fc. 179 



It has yet to be determined whether any of the species included in sec- 

 tion A range east of the Bay of Bengal or any in section B into Hindustan ; 

 also to which of the sections the other described Indo-Malayan species of 

 Trionyx should be referred ; and additional particulars of all are still much 

 wanted. 



What, moreover, Aspilus cariniferus, Gray, from Puna really is I do not 

 know, and should be much obliged to any one who would forward me soft 

 turtles from that locality to settle the question. 



P. S. — A very curious account of the habits of some of our river turtles, 

 probably of the present family, was communicated to me by Lt. Col. Swiney, 

 24th M. N. I. This officer was one day preparing to fish in the Narbada, 

 when he remarked a funeral procession directing its way to the spot he 

 had selected for his work. Putting up his rod, he watched the affair, and 

 was surprised soon to see numerous little black bodies in the river, which 

 proved to be turtles hastening to the scene of operations. The creatures 

 even had the boldness to leave the water and had to be kept off the body 

 with sticks. The body was that of a poor man, so after slightly burning 

 the face, it was pitched into the river and then it was a sight to see the 

 race tbat took place between the turtles on shore and those in the water 

 to get at it. The place in question was the ordinary burning ghat of the 

 neighbouring villages, and these turtles were evidently exercising their vested 

 rights in these funeral baked meats, and were really in so doing performing 

 useful service. 



Mr. Wood-Mason remarked that Mr. Theobald was in all probability 

 quite right in assuming that the very young in all the three Gangetic species 

 of Trionyx were ocellated, the very young of a multitude of closely-allied 

 forms being often so similar as to be nearly, if not quite, indistinguishable 

 from one another. Such cases were explicable on what had been called the 

 " recapitulation hypothesis," according to which the remarkable series of 

 changes which every individual in passing from its simplest to its completely 

 adult form underwent were so many more or less complete repetitions of the 

 forms which its ancestry had successively exhibited in bygone ages : to adopt 

 Haeckel's formula " the development of the individual (ontogeny) was a brief 

 and rapid recapitulation of that of the species (ph/logeny) ." We might 

 therefore feel confident that these young turtles in their ocellated livery 

 showed us the colouration of the progenitor of the group. In conclusion, 

 he alluded briefly to the possibility of forming, by a study of the develop- 

 ment and of certain peculiarities in the adults of their living descendants, 

 some idea of the colouration of many animals long extinct : for instance, 

 from the existence of longitudinal stripes in the young of the wild pigs of 

 India and Europe and from the tendency in the young of feral individuals 



