
Turtle Soup 
Wherein Much Is Related 
Concerning the Turtle and 
but Little Regarding Soup 
They fight each other with the primal savagery of bulldogs. 
ID you ever eat it? Not mock- 
D turtle-soup, nor green-turtle, nor 
sea-turtle, nor terrapin a la 
Maryland, but plain turtle? You know: 
regular mud-turtle—all fixed up with 
garlic and onions and small fresh car- 
rots and petites pois and tiny new 
potatoes and just the 
right amount of season- 
ing and all that? What! 
Never did? 
Neither did I. 
But that is not say- 
ing that I do not know 
all about it except the 
taste. We have a whole 
raft of turtles at Lake 
Rossignol, Nova Scotia, 
every spring. About 
the end of June the old 
mammies crawl out of 
the lake and up on to 
the sand hill upon 
which my camp is built, and lay their 
eggs. But that is not all there is to it 
by a long shot. The mink and the foxes 
and the skunks and the bears, and 
even the crows dig them up almost as 
fast as the fecund old girls can lay 
’em. And I have counted thirty eggs 
in one batch. I, too, have dug them up 
and eaten them for breakfast. You 
cannot boil them hard. That is to say, 
you can boil them as hard as you like, 
but boiling does not seem to make any 
impression upon the white. That re- 
mains always sticky, translucent and 
slimy. The yolks act civilized, however, 
and turn hard and look just like the 
centers of birds’ eggs—say, that of an 
eagle, or stake-driver, or gull, or owl, 
or pigeon; things like that. 
HE eggs of the big black mud- 
turtle, such as are here shown in 
the photos, are white, spherical and 
about the size of a bantam’s eggs. They 
have a pliable thin shell and will stand 
but little handling; in fact, they seem 
but illy equipped with protective cov- 
29 
v0 

Not handsome, to say 
the least. 
ering, considering the scandalous treat- 
ment meted out to them by their snappy 
and persistent mothers. On the other 
hand, the eggs laid by the small and 
handsome turtle with the large, orange 
colored, diamond diagram upon its back 
(which testudinate reptile inhabits the 
same waters as_ the 
larger mud-turtle) are 
quite oval in shape and 
fully as large. As to 
their edible qualities, 
one is as muddy tasting 
as the other. And I 
imagine the soup from 
either turtle would 
leave nothing to com- 
plain of—if one did not 
take it too seriously. 
Considering how shy 
the turtles are most of 
the year, and how sel- 
dom one sees them even 
at a distance (I refer to the large va- 
riety), it is an amphibious paradox that 
during the egg laying season the fe- 
males persist in digging their incubators 
in the sandy spots right in front of 
the boathouse, main camp, or in the 
garden, as it may please their fancy. 
By PHIL MOORE 
I presume their ancestors have been 
laying eggs in the same places for-a 
hundred thousand years or more and 
it takes quite a while to breed out a 
family habit. At any rate, the turtles 
clamber up the steep shore of the lake 
at all hours of the day or night, and 
regardless of nearby works of modern 
man, dig holes about six to eight inches | 
deep with their hind legs. They then 
stick their long bony tails in the ex- 
cavation and scoop out a pear shaped 
hole with a small end up. In that hole 
they lay their eggs, one on top of the 
other and closely packed. With the 
hind legs they push the dirt over the 
hole and eggs, breaking all the top ones 
in the operation, and waddle off to the 
lake in sweet and motherly contentment 
over work conscientiously accomplished. 
The eggs are supposed to hatch in the 
sand as it is warmed by the sun. 
DO not know the length of the period 
of incubation, nor what percentage of 
eggs are hatched. I never saw a young 
turtle nor do I think any eggs are left 
unmolested anywhere around our lakes. 
Many are laid and few answer. Vio- 
lated nests and broken shells adorn 

A right cross counter and right hook for the jaw. 
EOS 
