SPEED OF THE TURTLE. 221 



animal be caught on or near her nest, as I have witnessed, the re- 

 maining eggs, all small, without shells, and as it were threaded 

 like so many beads, exceed three thousand. In an instance 

 where I found that number, the turtle weighed nearly four 

 hundred pounds. 



" The young, soon after being hatched, and when yet scarcely 

 larger than a dollar, scratch their way through their sandy 

 covering, and immediately betake themselves to the water. 

 Tlie food of the green turtle consists chiefly of marine plants, 

 more especially the grass-wrack (Zostera marina), which they cut 

 near the roots, to procure the most tender and succulent parts. 

 Their feeding-grounds, as I have elsewhere said,, are easily dis- 

 covered by floating masses of these plants on the flats or along 

 the shores to which they resort. The hawk-billed species feeds 

 on seaweeds, crabs, and various kinds of shell-fish and fishes ; 

 the logger -head mostly on the fish of conch-shells, of large size, 

 which they are enabled, by means of their powerful beak, to 

 crush to pieces with apparently as much ease as a man cracks 

 a walnut. One which was brought on board the Marion, and 

 placed near the fluke of one of her anchors, made a deep in- 

 dentation in that hammered piece of iron that quite surprised me. 

 The trunk-turtle feeds on moUusca, fish, Crustacea, sea-urchins, 

 and various marine plants. All the species move through the 

 water with surprising speed ; but the green and hawk- billed in 

 particular remind you by their celerity, and the ease of their 

 motions, of the progress of a bird in the air. It is therefore no 

 easy matter to strike one with a spear, and yet this is often 

 done by an accomplished turtler. While at Key West and 

 other islands on the coast, where I made the observations here 

 presented to you, I chanced to have need to purchase some 

 turtles to feed" my friends on board the Lady of the Green 

 Mantle — not my friends, her gallant officers, or the brave tars. 

 who formed her crew, for all of them had already been satiated 

 with turtle soup ; but my friends the herons, of which I had a 

 goodly number in coops, intending to carry them to John Bach- 

 man of Charleston, and other persons for whom I felt a sincere 

 regard. So I went to a ' crawl,' accompanied by Dr. Benjamin 

 Strobel, to inquire about prices, when to my surprise I found 

 the smaller the turtles, ' above ten pounds weight,' the dearer 



