CHELONIA MYDAS. 29 



Habits. The Chelonia mydas lives mostly in deep water, feeding on marine 

 plants, especially one called turtle-grass, (Zostera marina;) this, according to 

 Audubon, they cut near the roots, to procure the most tender and succulent part, 

 which alone is eaten, wloile the rest of the plant floats to the surface, and is there 

 collected in large fields, a sure indication that the feeding-ground of the Green 

 Turtle is near. In confinement, however, they eat readily enough purslain, 

 (Portulacca oleracea,) and even grow fat on this nourishment. 



Green Turtles are very seldom seen to approach the land, unless at certain 

 seasons to lay their eggs; in the months of April and May, great numbers seek 

 for this purpose the sandy shores of desolate islands, or the uninhabited banks of 

 certain rivers, where they are least Mable to interruption in their work of repro- 

 duction. The Tortugas islands are a favourite haimt: these are four or five 

 uninhabited sand banks, which are only visited by tm'tlers and wreckers. 

 Between these islands are deep channels, so that the Turtles come at once to 

 good landing. They are not confined however to these islands, but are found 

 abundantly on other keys and inlets on the main. The female arrives by night, 

 slowly and cautiously she approaches the shore, and if undisturbed, crawls at 

 once over the sand above high water mark; here with her fins she digs a hole one 

 or two feet deep, in which she lays her eggs, between one and two hundred in 

 number. These she "arranges in the most careful manner, and then scoops the 

 loose sand back over the eggs, and so levels and smooths the surface, that few 

 persons on seeing the spot could imagine any thing had been done to it."* This 

 accompUshed, she retreats speedily to the water, leading the eggs to be hatched 

 by the heat of the sun, which is generally accomplished in about three weeks. 

 Two or three times in the season does the female return to nearly the same spot 

 and deposit nearly the same number of eggs, so that the whole amoimt annually 

 would be four or five hundred; and it is not a little singular, that animals so low 

 in the scale of creation, should have the instinct to return to these haunts from 

 great distances, himdreds and even thousands of miles, in some instances in three 



* Audubon's Ornithological Biography, vol. vi. p. 373. 



