enumerated as marking the Family: but if, with some zoologists, we treat the differences between these animals as generic and not specific, restricting the term Chelone to the Green Turtle and its allies (C. mydas, maculosa, marmorata, &c.), we may give the following (from Duméril and Bibron) as the distinctive characteristics of this genus. The plates which compose the disk of the carapace are thirteen, not overlapping; the muzzle is short and rounded; the upper jaw has a slight notch in front, and small dentelations on the sides; the horny case of the lower jaw is formed of three pieces, and has its sides deeply dentelated; the first toe of each foot is furnished with a nail.
The Green Turtle (Chelone mydas, Linn.) is of an olive or greenish-brown hue above, and yellowish-white below. The carapace consists of twenty-five marginal plates, surrounding a disk of thirteen; the medial plates of the latter form almost perfect hexagons; the whole shell is somewhat heart-shaped, being pointed at the posterior extremity. Its length is sometimes above six feet, and its weight six or seven hundred pounds. Dampier mentions one that was captured in the Bay of Campeachy, which was nearly six feet wide, and four feet thick. A son of Captain Roche, a boy of ten years old, went in the shell as a boat, from the shore to his father's ship, lying about a quarter of a mile distant. Pliny speaks of the Chelonophagi, dwelling on the shores of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, who not only subsisted on Turtles, but converted their enormous shells into roofs for their huts, and boats for their little voyages; and the inhabitants
