Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/415

Rh had been a heavy shower during the preceding night, which had resulted in temporary pools of fresh water in a few places, and it was in one of these pools near Spittal Pond that a half dozen or more pairs were found. A quantity of the spawn was secured and a series of eggs preserved.

Reptiles have at present very few representatives. There are no snakes, and the possible importation of them is carefully guarded against. The only land reptile is the Bermuda lizard (Eumices longirostris), which is not found elsewhere and is probably indigenous. Of turtles, four species, none of which is peculiar to Bermuda, are known to frequent the islands:—the green turtle (Chelonia mydas), the hawk bill (Erctmochelys imbricata), the logger-head (Thalassochelys caouana) and the trunk or leather turtle (Sphargis coriacea). The green turtle is still caught in nets in small numbers, but the others are found only occasionally. From the accounts of several of the early writers on Bermuda it is evident that some of the turtles (perhaps the green turtle) were once very abundant. Sylvanus Jourdan, writing of the shipwreck of Sir George Somers in 1609, says:

There are also great store of Tortoises (which some call turtles), and those so great, that I have seene a bushell of egges in one of their bellies, which are sweeter than any Henne egge: and the Tortoise itselfe is all very goode meate, and yieldeth great store of oyle, which is as sweete as any butter: and one of them will suffice fifty men a meale at least: and of these hath beene taken great store, with two boates at the least forty in one day. . . We carried with vs also a good portion of Tortoise oyle, which either for frying or baking did vs very great pleasure, it being very sweete nourishing and wholesome.

An early account of their egg-laying, by Peter Martyr, is given in these words:

At such time as the heate of Nature moueth them to generation, they come forthe of the Sea, and making a deepe pit in the sand, they lay three or foure hundred Egges therein: when they haue thus emptied their bag of Conception, they put as much of the same againe into the Pit as may satisfie to couer their Egges, and so resorte againe vnto the Sea, nothing carefull of their succession. At the day appointed of Nature to the procreation of these creatures there creepeth out a multitude of Tortoyses, as it were Pismyers out of an anthill, and this only by the heate of the Sunne, without any helpe of their Parents: their Egges are as big as Geese Egges, and themselues growne to perfection, bigger than great round Targets.

It is, however, the richness of the life in the sea—in marked contrast to the paucity of that on land—which is the chief source of attraction to the zoologist. If the gardens on the land require much attention and are the reflection of man's assiduity in transplanting the products of one country to the soil of another, the gardens of the sea demand no such care, and man has had little or nothing to do with shaping the wonderful display of marine life that carpets the floors of the broad lagoons and the reefs of the Bermuda plateau.