764 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Interesting Facts About Turtles 
A Little Nature Study by a Scientist that will Interest Old and Young Naturalists Alike 
By Randle C. Rosenberger M. D., Professor of Hygiene and Bacteriology, Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, Pa. 
OR a great many years I have 
taken a great interest in the 
land turtle. I have at the pres¬ 
ent time a number (36), some 
of which I have had for at 
least seventeen years. To most 
people they are ugly and re¬ 
pulsive, as the head, when fully 
protruded and extended, looks like a snake and 
furthermore their clumsy method of progression 
does not add anything attractive. 
A yard in a city, fifteen feet by twelve feet, 
formed the “farm” for a great many years (15). 
Here they have been watched, their habits and 
characteristics studied with the greatest inter¬ 
est, and a number of points observed seem too 
interesting to remain unrecorded. 
Any one can easily recognize, as a rule, the 
male and the female—the former being larger 
and flatter, while the female is slightly smaller 
and the shell more dome shaped or convex. 
One of the interesting points about turtles is 
their great variety of foods. They are, as a rule, 
good scavengers, eating all kinds of decomposing 
and putrefying materials; beef, or in fact, any 
meat is eaten. I have seen them eat the flesh 
of birds and of moles; and, while earthworms 
are relished by them, any worm or grub is taken. 
Worms from shellbarks and ordinary maggots 
are gotten rid of in a hurry. Blackberries, May 
apples, cherries and mulberries, tomatoes, cucum¬ 
bers, and one vegetable eagerly eaten by my 
stock is green sugar corn, either raw or cooked. 
In the spring when they first come out of the 
soil and food is not plentiful in their pen, I 
have bought canned corn and they certainly have 
made it disappear very quickly. Beetles and 
tumble bugs, potato bugs, either in larval or ma¬ 
ture forms, are destroyed. 
Toad stools, especially the large flat pink ones, 
white and yellow ones, are eaten, while I have 
seen them pass a black toad stool by several 
days unnoticed. 
Occasionally when a female drops an egg on 
the ground it is quickly eaten by the others. 
Ordinary hens’ eggs are eaten and a great? relish 
enjoyed hugely by them is thick sour milk. I 
have placed a quantity of this milk in two or 
three places in the pen and in five minutes it is 
surrounded by the turtles, just like flies on a 
lump of sugar. The scrapings of limberger 
cheese have also been eaten! 
A piece of butter which had been upon a plat¬ 
ter in the ice box for months was placed before 
them and this was eaten in due time. Crab ap¬ 
ples and canteloupe are enjoyed by them, but 
watermelon is not so eagerly gobbled up like the 
canteloupe. I was surprised one morning, when 
I found one of the large turtles had caught and 
disemboweled a very large toad which I had 
in the yard. I have seen turtles eating at eleven 
o’clock at night, when one would think they 
would be resting. 
They prefer the shade and at certain times 
during the day, if the sun is very hot, they re¬ 
treat under the logs which I have for a shelter. 
During rain they are very active and move about 
with heads and necks outstretched enjoying the 
shower bath hugely, and evidently on the out¬ 
look for worms, just as some birds, after or 
during a shower. The youngest of turtles I 
have ever had (several weeks) seems to take 
to the same food as the adults. 
The Laying of Eggs. 
This is one of the most instructive things 
that I have ever watched. Invariably they chose 
in my yard a situation with a southern exposure 
when desiring to lay. In only two instances was 
an eastern exposure observed and once a west¬ 
ern. Part of the yard being a cement walk we 
could sometimes observe the female making mo¬ 
tions as for digging the nest. Sometimes for a 
half a day she would remain stationary and with 
her back legs commence to work for this pur¬ 
pose. Lifting her to the grass plot, in a short 
time she would commence to dig. First with the 
left hind foot she would remove a little dirt 
and pile it upon her left side; then with the 
right hind foot and pile the removed dirt upon 
the right side. This would be repeated again 
and again, probably for hours, until the proper 
size hole (and depth) was obtained. 
Egg laying does not always occur during the 
day time, as I have observed one or two digging 
away past midnight. Sometimes they will have 
dug for about an inch or so and then not make 
any more progress downward. In these in¬ 
stances, they have met with obstructions, like a 
small stone, which they cannot remove. I have, 
with a pair of forceps, removed the obstruction 
on several occasions with the turtle still in situ, 
and after a minute or two she resumes her work. 
The nest or repository is about three inches in 
depth and about an inch and a half or a little 
more in width. When she has it finished, she 
discharges her eggs into it. When the egg is 
deposited in the hole, she is not just satisfied in 
dropping it, but she reaches down with her hind 
leg and places the egg horizontally and covers a 
little dirt over it. Then the second egg and the 
remaining eggs are all treated similarly, and 
when the last one is deposited and placed, she 
commences to fill up with the dirt that remains. 
This she puts into the hole with an alternate 
right and left leg until all is filled in. 
After it is all done, she pats it with both her 
hind feet together, and then with her body raised 
and lowered pats and smooths over the place 
where the eggs are buried. Then she leaves it 
and never looks after it, as the sun now plays 
its part in hatching the eggs. The eggs are 
whitish in color with a semi-elastic shell, about 
the size of a pigeon egg. 
The number laid by a turtle varies; I have 
seen three, and on one occasion I have seen eight 
laid at one sitting. I have also observed one 
turtle laying its eggs, covering them over, and 
a little later (a day or two), another female dig 
in the same place, remove the eggs, and lay her 
own in this doubly dug repository. Once a fe¬ 
male dug six hours and laid four eggs; another 
dug several hours, the hole measured two inches 
across and three and one-half inches in depth, 
and she laid eight eggs within a half hour. 
Not all eggs hatch out but in the instance 
where eight were laid, I had the pleasure of 
seeing six little baby turtles come out. Other 
eggs which were laid in a hole dug with a west¬ 
ern or eastern exposure, never came to anything. 
I have dug carefully into these nests but I have 
always come upon decomposing eggs. 
The eggs are usually laid in June, but once I 
saw an egg lying on the ground in October 
(1913) when the temperature was 63 degrees. 
I saw one deposited on the ground in July; I 
buried this in soft earth, marked the spot, but 
nothing ever came of it. 
The young turtles hatch out in three months 
and I include some dated observations to show 
the hatching period. 
One batch of eggs was laid June 20, 1908 and 
hatched out September 10, 1908. 
Another lot was laid June 13, 1909 and hatched 
out September 20, 1909. 
On June 4, 1911, two turtles laid eggs but 
nothing resulted, while a third laid eggs July 
12, 1912, and a fourth laid two eggs August 29, 
1915- 
Three turtles laid eggs July 20, 21, and 23, 
1913, some of these were eaten by other turtles, 
but no young were hatched out. 
As mentioned previously, digging of nests may 
occur during day or night, and one turtle June 
4, 1910, laid eggs between 7 and 9 P. M.; an¬ 
other during a heavy rainstorm, finishing the 
process by covering over with mud. One dug 
six hours and laid four eggs. 
The most interesting egg laying I ever wit¬ 
nessed was on June 18, 1912, the turtle com¬ 
menced to dig at 6 P. M., and was still busy 
at work the next morning at 8 o’clock, June 19, 
1912. Five days later, June 24, 1912, a second 
turtle dug these eggs out and deposited four of 
her own and covered the nest up. These were 
hatched out September 6, 1912. 
Personally I do not believe that the turtle 
digging out the previous batch of eggs was vin¬ 
dictive or mischievous, but that the ground 
seemed soft and easily worked, therefore, it took 
advantage of the spot. 
The young turtles when they make their 
emergence at the end of three months are dark 
in color and quite active. If you place one on 
its back at this time, it will arch its head and 
neck and come around to its normal position. 
The “shell,” of course, is quite soft but in about 
three years the “shell” really becomes hardened. 
