ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN. 



807 



A telegram was sent the Aquarium for in- 

 structions to buy. but the answer came after it 

 had been sold to two young men who were go- 

 ing to embark in the show business, so they 

 hired a tent on the main street near the amuse- 

 ment grounds and exhibited it during the Fourth 

 of July — the turtle was captured on the first. 

 Unfortunately Key West had seen about all it 

 wanted of the turtle for nothing, so the show 

 business was forgotten and the turtle purchased 

 for the Aquarium. It was carefully doctored 

 — all its wounds were disinfected and covered 

 with collodion, its eyes washed with boracic acid 

 solution, and it was laced into a rope net padded 

 with sacks of sponge clippings to keep it moist 

 in its upright position. Its weight smothered it 

 however, as all the old turtlers had predicted, 

 when it had been but twenty-four hours in this 

 position on the way to New York. 



It is a pity that its exact weight will remain 

 unknown since it had to be cleaned and salted 

 aboard the Comal in order to preserve it for the 

 American Museum of Natural History. It is 

 safe to say that it weighed not less than seven 

 hundred pounds, however. Its upper shell 

 measured four feet five inches and that of the 

 largest green turtle in the Aquarium measures 

 only three feet ten inches. It is being used as 

 a model from which plaster casts are being 

 made at the Museum, one of which will soon be 

 on exhibition at the Aquarium. 



A turtle crawl is not a hauling-out place as 

 might be expected, but a stockade of palm 

 trunks in about five feet of water — the word 

 comes from the Spanish corral, an enclosure. 

 The green turtles are kept separate from the 

 dangerous loggerheads. When a green turtle is 

 wanted, a man gets into the crawl, which is gen- 

 erally the whole space under a dock and places 

 a noose around each fore flipper and then two 

 men on the dock draw the turtle up through a 

 manhole. It is then weighed and the weight 

 and consignee's name written on the plastron 

 with indelible pencil. It is then pinioned fore 

 and aft and is ready for shipment. Handling 

 a loggerhead is a different process for no one 

 will enter the crawl, so the turtles are drawn 

 to the surface with boat hooks and noosed by 

 the fore flippers and they are then hauled onto 

 the dock from their open crawl. They are not 

 passive like the greens but bite at the boat hooks 

 with their formidable jaws. They are weighed 

 and pinioned diagonally and their inferior meat 

 is then for sale. A loggerhead is identifiable 

 at a distance by the warm glow of its reddish 

 skin whereas a green turtle looks pale or white. 



All the marine turtles lay their eggs in the 

 sand of the beach to the number of about a hun- 



dred and twenty-five and the hunters find the 

 nests and dig out the eggs, or else find the tur- 

 tle at the nest and turn her if she is not too 

 large, otherwise they dig a trench beside her and 

 tilt her into it, or if this fails and she starts for 

 the water the hunter grasps her bj- the head and 

 thrusting his fingers into her eyes, guides her 

 any place he chooses — to where he can reach a 

 rope if possible and with this fastened to a flip- 

 per a small bush is sufficient to tether a green. 

 A loggerhead (so named on account of its large 

 head) cannot be handled this way for its jaws 

 are strong enough to crush a heavy conch shell 

 to get at the snail and it does not hesitate to 

 use them in self defense. The vegetarian diet 

 of the green is a good index of its inoffensive- 

 ness. Once in a while a green or hawksbill tur- 

 tle is caught on hook and line and is landed 

 without much difficulty. Lately schooners have 

 been fitted out to take turtles at sea, where they 

 are pegged with a spear or taken in a bully, a 

 long handled net. These catches yield a ma- 

 jority of males because the years of turning the 

 female turtles which crawl onto the beach to 

 lay their eggs has put them greatly in the minor- 

 ity. The male turtles are easily distinguishable 

 by their long tails. 



The same week that the large green turtle 

 was taken saw the capture of an exceptionally 

 large hawksbill turtle (Chelonia imbricata) by 

 a sponge fisher. This picturesque young conch, 

 as the natives are called, came to Key West with 

 his well smack loaded with live conchs for the 

 holiday market and the hawksbill, which he 

 caught on hook and line, swimming in the well 

 above the shells. The tortoise shell on this tur- 

 tle would be worth about thirty dollars at five 

 dollars a pound in the open market and the meat 

 which is very highly prized would bring about 

 fifteen dollars, and if she bore eggs about double 

 that amount, but the theory of the turtlers is 

 that a turtle bearing eggs will not eat, so the 

 probability was that this female did not have 

 eggs since she took bait and that therefore she 

 would live in the Aquarium. This perhaps is 

 the largest specimen of Atlantic hawksbill ever 

 measured and weighed of which we have any 

 record, as she was thirty-eight and a half by 

 thirty-four and a half inches measured over the 

 curves and weighed one hundred and eightv- 

 eight pounds. Last April we received what up 

 to June was the largest hawksbill ever seen at 

 the Aquarium, a specimen weighing one hundred 

 and twenty-four pounds and measuring thirty- 

 three and a half by thirty-one inches over the 

 curves. She was taken on the beach at Porto 

 Rico and loaned to the Aquarium by Mr. Par- 

 ker. Both of these turtles refused food and in- 



