EMYS TERRAPIN. gj 



positively determined from his description: "anterior extremities with five, pos- 

 terior with four toes; body of a compressed oval form, and seldom exceeds eight 

 or nine inches in length: is often served up at gentlemen's tables, and looked 

 upon by many as good food : frequents the lagoons and morasses of Jamaica." 

 Yet this is all that Gmelin had to establish the species Testudo palustris, in his 

 edition of the Systema Natures of Linnaeus. The name is well enough, and 

 Leconte, in his excellent Monograph on the North American Tortoises, has 

 retained it. Yet I cannot agree with him, in considering the Testudo palustris of 

 Gmelin, and the Testudo terrapin of Schoepff as identical, and must therefore 

 adopt the name of the latter, as he first accurately described it. 



* Civil and Natural History of Jamaica, p. 465. 



