Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/288

 proceedings is enormous. At least 6000 jars, holding each three gallons of the oil, are exported annually from the Upper Amazons and the Madeira to Pará, where it is used for lighting, frying fish, and other purposes. It may be fairly estimated that 2000 more jars-full are consumed by the inhabitants of the villages on the river. Now, it takes at least twelve basketsfull of eggs, or about 6000, by the wasteful process followed, to make one jar of oil. The total number of eggs annually destroyed amounts, therefore, to 48,000,000. As each turtle lays about 120, it follows that the yearly offspring of 400,000 turtles is thus annihilated. A vast number, nevertheless, remain undetected; and these would probably be sufficient to keep the turtle population of these rivers up to the mark, if the people did not follow the wasteful practice of lying in wait for the newly-hatched young, and collecting them by thousands for eating; their tender flesh and the remains of yolk in their entrails being considered a great delicacy. The chief natural enemies of the turtle are vultures and alligators, which devour the newly-hatched young as they descend in shoals to the water. These must have destroyed an immensely greater number before the European settlers began to appropriate the eggs than they do now. It is almost doubtful if this natural persecution did not act as effectively in checking the increase of the turtle as the artificial destruction now does. If we are to believe the tradition of the Indians, however, it had not this result; for they say that formerly the waters teemed as thickly with turtles as the air now does with mosquitoes. The universal opinion of the settlers on the Upper