634 The Leather Turtle. [ October, 
composed by attaching strings to the shell of some marine 
tortoise.” 
The first specimen seen in this latitude, of which I can find any 
record, was captured in Chesapeake bay in the year 1840. This 
was measured by Dr. E. Hallowell, an eminent herpetologist, but 
his figures differ so slightly from others made more recently, it is 
unnecessary to repeat them. As, however, the description given 
in the second volume of North American Herpetology, a work 
published in 1842 by Dr. John Edwards Holbrook, was the result 
of an examination of this specimen, it is reproduced here in a 
somewhat condensed form, as follows: 
“ Characters.—Head large, jaws strong, superior having three 
deep triangular notches, inferior hooked; body covered with 
a coriaceous skin, tuberculated in the young, smooth in adult ani- 
mals; extremities without nails. 
“ Description —The carapace is sub-cordiform, largest before and 
deeply concave on the neck; it is narrow and pointed behind and 
above, and is marked with seven longitudinal carinæ, one of 
which runs along the entire vertebral line. On either side of this 
are three others, the external ones following the margin of the 
carapace from its anterior to its posterior extremity, where they 
meet in a point above the tail. The nostrils are anterior and near . 
together. The neck is short, very thick and covered with a 
coriaceous skin. The anterior extremities are twice the length of 
the posterior ones. The tail is short and extends but little 
beyond the carapace. The whole superior surface of the animal 
is of a dark brown color with exception of the carinæ, which are 
tinged in different places with obscure dirty white.” 
A very fair portrait of Sphargis coriacea accompanies this 
description. 
So far as I can learn no later evidence has been given of the 
presence of Sphargis on our shores prior to the summer of 1878, 
when four specimens were stranded upon the coast of New Jer- 
sey. Of these two were doubtless first discovered near Atlantic 
City by the writer and a friend, Mr. Chas. Morris, one of them, 
in fact, being observed for some time before it was borne by the 
waves to our feet. They were both dead, though otherwise 17 
good condition. 
The two others mentioned were landed at a later period near 
Beach. Haven, Ocean county. Ina reference to them Isaac Hall, 
an old sea captain, remarked, that “he had seen turtles of all 
