200 Life and Immortalty. 
are of a bronze, blackish green, or deep-brown color, and the 
shells are beautifully marked, glossy, ridged, or carved, and 
made up of closely-united, many-sided plates, arranged 
upon a thickened, lighter-colored and apparently uniform 
bony plate, which is capable of being separated into many 
independent pieces. The shell, or epidermic covering, is 
not brittle and lime-like, as the shells of all mollusks are, but 
is of the nature of horn. In general the plastron is of a 
lighter color than the carapace, being light-brown, yellow or 
cream, with yellowish lines dividing the plates, and with 
bordering bands of red, yellow and purple. The upper 
plate is usually of a very dark color, marked and lined with 
darker and lighter tints, and often displaying a bevelled 
yellow edge. Chrysemys picta, the Painted Turtle, receives 
his name from the beauty of his many-colored shell, while 
the Spotted Turtle, Vanemys guttatus, which is often called 
the Wood Turtle, is distinguished by the round yellow 
spots that are regularly distributed over his dark-colored 
carapace. 
But of all our turtles none is so well known or so interest- 
ing in his ways as the Common Box Tortoise—Cistudo 
clausa. He affects dry woods, and dislikes the water, and is 
a long-lived creature, some individuals having been known 
to live more than a hundred years. Box Tortoises in confine- 
ment have been found to eat meat, insects and bread and 
milk from the hand, but if berries were put into their mouths 
they wiped them out in a very funny manner with their front 
feet, which they used after the fashion of a hand. 
When foraging in the woods, especially during the rainy 
season, at which time manifold varieties of fungi prevail, they 
make their meals largely upon these plants. We have seen 
a huge toadstool that had been gnawed off so evenly, the 
central pillar only being left intact, that appeared as though 
it had been cut away by a knife. This had been the work of 
the Box Tortoise, for on looking around we soon descried, 
moving leisurely over the leaf-strewn earth, the creature 
