No. 8.— An Important Addition to the Fauna of Massachusetts. 
By Outeam Bangs. 
The terrapin Malaclemys 1 terrapin (Schoepff) lias never been 
given as an inhabitant of Massachusetts in any of the lists of the 
reptiles of the State, neither Dr. Storer nor Dr. Allen mentioning 
it in their Catalogues. It is with pleasure, therefore, that I record 
this valuable addition to our fauna. 
It is remarkable that the terrapin should so long have escaped the 
notice of naturalists in Massachusetts, as it has a wide range along 
our southern sea coast, is quite abundant, and is well known to many 
of the inhabitants of Buzzard’s Bay and Cape Cod who engage in a 
paying business by shipping it to the New York markets in the 
winter. 
I have known for fifteen years that terrapin were common in the 
creeks and salt marshes of Buzzard’s Bay and have often caught them 
there, but not until last summer did I learn that this fact was 
unknown to naturalists. 2 
Until within a very few years, the value of the terrapin was not 
appreciated by most of the natives and it was abundant. In the 
summer at low tide it was no unusual siodit to see six or eigdit fine 
terrapin sunning themselves on a single rock, and they were to be 
seen in all the creeks and coves. At this time only one man, an 
old negro named Dempsy Hill, caught them. He came from the 
south and understood the art of taking terrapin and knew their 
value. He was very mysterious about it, and kept this secret for 
a long time, shipping them to market by the barrel every winter. 
1 Agassiz, in 1857, Contributions to Nat. Hist, of U. S., p. 437, pi. 1, tigs. 10-12, changed 
Gray’s spelling to Malacoclemxjs. Agassiz’s spelling was adopted by Boulanger in 1880 
in his Catalogue Chelonians, p. 89. It seems to me, however that Gray’s original spelling 
although incorrect should stand. It was evidently not a typographical error. A name is 
merely a combination of letters, and one is at liberty to use a wholly arbitrary combina¬ 
tion. 
2 In 1884, in U. S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries. The Fishery Industries of the 
United States, p. 156, Mr. Frederick W. True gives the distribution of the terrapin as 
from Nantucket and New Bedford in Massachusetts to Texas.” Mr. True has told me 
that this distribution was given wholly on theory; he never having seen or heard of a 
Massachusetts specimen of the salt water terrapin. 
