• These turtles are all savage animals, capable of inflicting 

 severe bites, and without doubt they are very destructive 

 to fish. Their flesh and eggs are considered very eatable, 

 and their capture is usually made by hook and line or by 

 shooting them. Sluggish, mud-bottomed waters are pre- 

 ferably their abodes. They are of very wide distribution 

 and vary in size up to three feet or more. 



If any of the soft-shelled turtles occur nearby, no record 

 to my knowledge has ever been made of that fact. The 

 " Descriptive Catalogue of the Vertebrates of New Jersey " 

 (a revision of Dr. Abbott's Catalogue of 1868), by Julius 

 Nelson, 1 gives the following two as salt water turtles : 



Amy da mutica (Le S.)\ 



Leathery Turtle. 



" An occasional specimen has been met with in the 

 Raritan River. None appear to be found in the Delaware- 

 Occasionally seen in the Hudson." 



Aspidonectes spinifer (Le S.) . 



Common Soft-shelled Turtle. 



" Found in all the salt water rivers and creeks." 

 These statements are erroneous. The Trionychidae are 

 distinctly not salt water turtles, and it is very doubtful 

 whether they do occur here at all. Through the Erie 

 Canal one species has entered the upper Hudson River, 2 

 and there is a possibility that it may also have reached the 

 Delaware River by way of the Delaware and Hudson Canal. 

 Of late years a few have been found in the Delaware water- 

 shed. 3 



'See Final Report of the State Geologist. Vol. II., pt. 2. Trenton, 1890. 

 2 Holbrook. 



3 See American Naturalist, Vol. XXVIIL, 1894, p. 889. "Trionychidae 

 in New Jersey." 



