Tortoiseshell

“ If the plates of tortoiseshell are detached from the animal when decom position has set in, their colour becomes clouded and milky, and hence the cruel expedient is resorted to of suspending the turtle over fire till heat makes the shields start from the bony part of the carapace, after which the creature is permitted to escape to the water. ”

“ It not unfrequently happens that from a tortoiseshell mother, in the litter of kittens there are male blacks and clear whites, and I have known of one case when a good blue and one where the mixed colours were blue, light red, and light yellow were produced, while the sisters in the litter were of the usual pure tortoiseshell markings. ”

“ At Celebes, whence the finest tortoiseshell is exported to China, the natives kill the turtle by blows on the head, and immerse the shell in boiling water to detach the plates; dry heat is only resorted to by the unskilful. The natives eat the flesh of this turtle, but it is unpalatable to Europeans ”

“ In the nestling before the feathers come, the young of these colours are without down, and are thus thought to be, and doubtless are, a weakly breed; yet there is no absolute diminution of strength, beyond that of colour, when silver is matched to silver; but dun with dun, these last go lower in the scale, losing the black tint, and not unfrequently the colour is yellow; or, matched with black, breed true blacks. I am, therefore, of opinion that a tortoiseshell male and female would, and should, produce the best of tortoiseshells, both male and female. ”

“ Surely beautiful combs, boxes, and a number of ornamental things are made of tortoise-shell, and if so, it seems a pity to use it for a water-trough.”
“Your turtle, Fritz, is only fit for eating, its shell is worthless as regards ornament; whereas the species whose shell is prized so much is unfit for food. Tortoise-shell is subjected to the action of heat, the outer layer peels off, leaving a beautifully marked, semi-transparent surface, which is susceptible of a very high polish.”
The sledge quickly received its second load from the raft. ”

“ The shell in the more aquatic forms is depressed or flattened, but in the terrestrial kinds may be as highly arched as in the true land tortoises. The feet are adapted primarily for walking, but nearly always have the toes webbed, and the digits are longer than are those of the land tortoises. Only the two or three middle toes have claws. Some species have developed hinges in the plastron, whereby they may be completely closed up after the head and legs are withdrawn within the shell. Most of the species are carnivorous in habit, but a few, like the box tortoise, are strictly vegetarian. ”

“ BABY TORTOISE You know what it is to be born alone, Baby tortoise! The first day to heave your feet little by little from the shell, Not yet awake, And remain lapsed on earth, Not quite alive. A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean. To open your tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never open, Like some iron door; To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower base And reach your skinny little neck And take your first bite at some dim bit of herbage, Alone, small insect, Tiny bright-eye, Slow one. ”

“ Tortoise-shell is made by soaking the plates of the shell in warm water until they are soft; then they are pressed into the shapes wanted in warm iron moulds, and taken out and polished.
Some of the sea-turtles are very fierce; and although they have no teeth, their jaws are so strong that they can bite a walking-stick in half. Land-tortoises are quite harmless; they only attack the insects they feed upon. They go to sleep, like the dormouse, in the winter, but they do not make a burrow; they cover themselves with earth by scraping it up and throwing it over their bodies. ”

“ I judge this because I so often find him gazing at them through the wirework, his shell tilted at an angle as if he would fain climb up to satisfy his curiosity.
To the poor people who often visit my place in summer, many of whom have never seen such a creature before, the tortoise is an object of surprise, not unmixed with fear, for one woman asked if he would “fly at her,” and others seem to suppose him a creature of ferocious tendencies, judging by the way they keep at a distance and eye him askance. ”

“ There are different sorts—some that live on land, and some in water. Those that live in the sea are called turtles, and their shells are not so hard as that of the land-tortoise. It is easy to see why this is: a turtle would not be able to swim with so thick a shell; it would be much as if a man in armor were to try. Their shells are not all in one, but joined together by a sort of gristle, which enables them to move with greater ease and not so stiffly.
Directly any one hears the name of tortoise, he begins to think of tortoise-shell. ”

“ In value they sometimes exceed all but the very finest of the large upper plates, generally known simply as "shell." Of the host of land and fresh-water tortoises, most of which are of comparatively small size, the horny plates (which, by the way, are altogether wanting in the so-called soft tortoises of tropical rivers) , on account of their thinness and opacity, are now of no commercial value, at least in England. Moreover, it is by no means all species of marine turtles which yield commercial tortoise shell. ”

“ They are very harmless creatures, living chiefly on roots and bitter herbs: perhaps they eat insects as well. They lie buried in the sand during the long winters, in a torpid state: they lay a number of eggs, about the size of a blackbird's, the shell of which is tough and soft, like a snake's egg. The old tortoise buries these in the loose sand near the water's edge, and leaves them to be hatched by the heat of the sun. The little tortoise, when it comes out of the shell, is about as big as a large spider—it is a funny-looking thing. ”

“ Even in winter he went about without garments. He sat on a tortoise three feet long. Once he was asked: "About how old might this tortoise be?" He answered: "When Fu Hi first invented fish-nets and eel-pots he caught this tortoise and gave it to me. And since then I have worn its shield quite flat sitting on it. The creature dreads the radiance of the sun and moon, so it only sticks its head out of its shell once in two thousand years. Since I have had the beast, it has already stuck its head out five times." With these words he took his tortoise on his back and went off. ”

“ He doesn't know he is alone; Isolation is his birthright, This atom. To row forward, and reach himself tall on spiny toes, To travel, to burrow into a little loose earth, afraid of the night, To crop a little substance, To move, and to be quite sure that he is moving: Basta! To be a tortoise! Think of it, in a garden of inert clods A brisk, brindled little tortoise, all to himself— Croesus! In a garden of pebbles and insects To roam, and feel the slow heart beat Tortoise-wise, the first bell sounding From the warm blood, in the dark-creation morning. ”

“ Is't not a great butterfly? Will, can'st thou tell?
WILL.
What is it in sadness?
WIT. A tortoise, my boy; whose shell is so hard that a loaden cart may go over and not break it, and so she is safe within, and wheresoever she goes she bears it on her back, needing neither other succour or shelter, but her shell. The word underneath her is Providens securus, the provident is safe, like the tortoise armed with his own defence, and defended with his own armour; in shape somewhat round, signifying compass, wherein always the provident foresee to keep themselves within their own compass, my boy. ”

“ Well, besides the toys there is the big tortoise. That was brought home by a sailor many years ago, and has now crept and crawled over Madam Knoll’s floor for at least ten years. It is slow and clumsy about turning around, but it has lively little black eyes. Sometimes when I sit and look at the tortoise I think how dreadful for it just to crawl about in the half-darkness between the chair legs when it had been used to glorious sunshine and soft warm white sand and sea-water thoroughly warmed by the sun, down on the coast of Guinea where it came from. ”

“ Fortunately a tortoise received her on his back, and proceeded to raise up the earth, upon which the heavenly woman became the mother of mankind. These first men had white faces, and they used to dig in the ground to catch badgers. One day a zealous burrower thrust his knife too far and stabbed the tortoise, which immediately sank into the sea and drowned all the human race save one man. 149 In Finnish mythology the world is not a tortoise, but it is an egg, of which the white part is the ocean, the yolk is the earth, and the arched shell is the sky. ”

“ That is, the old males do; and it has been stated, that the males of some species of tortoises have a similar unnatural appetite.
The turtle of which we are speaking is one of the most carnivorous of the whole race, and one of the fiercest in its nature too; so much so, that it has earned the name of the “fierce tortoise” (Testudo ferox) . It will eat fish and small Crustacea, and almost any living thing it finds in the water, which is not too large for it. It is extremely expert in catching its prey. It lies concealed at the bottom among the roots of flags and nymphae ”

“ And now the transformation is complete, for, when we pass on to the next division of backboned animals, the "reptiles," we hear nothing more of gills, nor air taken from the water, nor fins, nor fishes' tails. We shall all allow that the tortoises are the most singular of any. Slow, ponderous creatures, with hard, bony heads, wide-open, expressionless eyes, horny beaks, and thick, clumsy legs, the tortoises seem, at first sight, to be only half alive, as they lumber along, carrying their heavy shell, and eating, when they do eat, in a dull, listless kind of way. ”

“ In America we also have a land tortoise, whose ways and modes of life are quite as interesting as those of White's Timothy. It is a little creature not more than five and a half inches long when full grown. No two individuals are marked alike. Before the attainment of full growth the shell is corrugated by numerous concentric ridges. As a new one is formed every year, the age of the tortoise may be obtained by counting these ridges, provided it be not full grown; for in old age the shell becomes smooth and polished. ”

“ Meanwhile, the tortoise had hidden himself in a thicket, in a burrow having two openings. While the man was looking in at one hole, the jabutí would appear at the other, and then when the man came to this opening, he would quickly go to the first; so that we have here, once more repeated, the story of the race between the slow tortoise or sun, and the swift moon or man. We have already seen the tortoise escape from the jaguar by going into a burrow by one opening and retiring by another, just as the sun appears to go into its burrow in the west, and come out in the east. ”

“ The best known of these in this country, is the marine family (Chelonidæ) , to which the edible and tortoise-shell turtles belong. The best known family in the United States and in the Continent of Europe, is the Emydæ, to which pertain the terrapins or ordinary river tortoises. Besides these, however, there is a very small family (Trionicidæ) of curious and exceptional forms, called mud-tortoises (Trionyx) .
The creatures which have next to be glanced at are those familiar forms, the frogs, toads and efts, which, together with their allies, form another class,—the class Batrachia. ”

“ The well-known "soft-shell" tortoise of the United States swims with powerful strokes and runs so quickly that it can hardly be overtaken. It hunts vigorously for crayfish and insect larvæ in the rivers. It buries itself in the mud when cold weather comes. ”

“ From the serpents the visitor should turn to the families of the
Testudinata, or
TORTOISES. Tortoises are broadly divided into three species, namely, land tortoises; fresh water tortoises, of which there are no less than forty-six varieties; and marine tortoises, well known to the citizens of London, in the shape of turtle-soup. The land tortoises subsist on vegetables, and are said to live occasionally more than two hundred years. The two first cases devoted to Testudinata (18, 19) contain the American, Indian, and African varieties of the land tortoise. ”

“ The flesh of the Tortoise is eaten, not only by human beings, but by birds, such as the lämmergeier. In order to get at the flesh of the Tortoise, they carry it high in the air and drop it on the ground so as to break the shell to pieces, should the reptile fall on a stone or rock. If, as is not often the case in such a rocky land as that of Palestine, it should fall on a soft spot, the bird picks it up, soars aloft, and drops it again. ”

“ What the jaws have got hold of is not allowed to escape again. The tortoise holds on and tears the prey to pieces with the sharp-clawed fingers. This takes a long time, only the scraped-off flesh and the intestines being eaten. The skeleton remains and sinks to the bottom, while in the case of a fish, the air-bladder floats away on the surface, and remains there as one of the surest signs of the existence of tortoises in that locality. ”

“ The spotted turtle, often called the wood turtle, is distinguished by fine yellow spots sprinkled over its black back. The turtle which I saw feasting on the [Pg 290] fungus was the common box tortoise. This box tortoise prefers dry woods, and dislikes the water. It is a long-lived creature. Some specimens have been known to live over a hundred years. A box tortoise that I had, ate meat, insects, and bread and milk from my hand, but if I put berries in its mouth it wiped them out with its front foot used hand-wise, in a very funny way. ”