THE HABITS OF MALAY REPTILES. 187 
rice, frogs, fruit, and green vegetables with equal pleasure. 
They lay rather large, oblong, blunt-ended, white eggs, two or 
three, or as many as five at a time, which they bury inthe sand. 
The shell is remarkably hard fora reptile’s egg, and the eggs, 
two inches long, are very large for the size of the tortoise. 
The large land-tortoise, Testudo emys, does not occur in 
Singapore, but is not very rare in Perak, especially inthe Din- 
dings, and is said to occur in Fenang also. I got a very fine 
female at Telok Sera, in the Dindings, which laid two eggs 
shortly after 1 got it. They resembled those of the box-tortoise, 
but were larger, This tortoise lives in the drier parts of the 
woods, and does not seem to care about water atall. It eats 
all kinds of leaves voraciously. 
Several kinds of snapping-turtles (7rionyx) are recorded 
from the peninsula, but the commonest is 7’rionyx cartilagineus, a 
very large flat turtle, the shell of which is covered with a lea- 
thery, dark gray skin, often marked with olive spots, and which 
is continued as a flange all round the shell. The head and neck 
are gray with small yellow spots, and the snout is long and 
pointed, giving the animal a very ugly appearance; the feet are 
very thick and powerful, ending in sharp claws. 
These turtles usually live in tidal rivers, but sometimes get 
into ponds. They rarely leave the water, but may be seen push- 
ing up their heads above the surface from time to time. One 
was caught in tne ditch by the Museum some years ago, and was 
transferred to the Gardens’ lake, where it eventually became 
very large, and attacked some of the water birds with great 
ferocity, killing and devouring some flamingoes. It was even- 
tually trapped and destroyed. Though these animals are pro- 
perly carnivorous, they seem very fond of boiled rice, and the 
ones in the Garden lake used always to come and feed off the 
rice put down for the water fowl, and those in captivity are fed 
for the most part on boiled rice made up in balls. The Chinese 
are very fond of these turtles, and their flesh fetches a high 
price in the markets. ‘The Malay name for them is Labi- Labi. 
The Chinese have a superstition about tortoises, which 
they consider emblems of longevity, the tortoise, with the 
dragon and phoenix being the first three animals in the world 
when it was created. They catch or buy as many tortoises of 
