John White’s North American Reptiles 
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JL land ' 'SU w thr fStu.j^es cJweme a due a/T other Tor/ s 
Fig. 1. Terrapene Carolina ( l)carolina (L.), as depicted by John White. 
Reproduced from a watercolor of 187-mm greatest straight-line object dimension. 
although the box turtle painting is reproduced in color in Borland 
(1975). 
The Cochran identifications of the three turtles are unimpeachable 
(Hulton and Quinn 1964). One painting clearly depicts Terrapene 
Carolina (L.), presumably T. c. Carolina (Fig. 1); another represents 
Malaclemys terrapin (Schoepff). presumably M. t. centrata (Latreille) 
(Fig. 2); and a sea turtle (Fig. 3) is readily identifiable as Caretta caretta 
caretta (L.). All three species occur widely on the Atlantic coast and 
could easily have been taken near Roanoke Island, where White spent 
most of his time. The subspecies of all three turtles are here suggested 
on the basis of geographic probability, not depiction of subspecific 
characters. Cochran noted (Hulton and Quinn 1964) that the Caretta is 
shown with too long a tail and with a pattern too regular and contrasty, 
and that the Malaclemys is improperly shown with six fingers and toes 
on the right side. Two species are shown with the wrong number of 
marginals (too many for Terrapene , too few for Malaclemys). 
