Page:Under the Sun.djvu/315

Rh be as it may, the turtle need never fear rivalry, and the alderman need never dread its extinction. In the seas of Florida alone it swarms in such prodigious quantity that well-authenticated cases are on record of small craft having to heave to until a shoal had passed, while in the remoter corners of the earth it still luxuriates in all its pristine multitudes, unthinned by capture and unmolested by man.

So long, therefore, as the alderman will remain constant to his soup, his soup will never desert him.

It is touching but strange that two species so widely separated, or, at any rate, so distantly connected as the common councilman and the common turtle, should display this mutual sympathy.

The latter is rather an ungainly animal, full in the stomach and short-legged, moving on rough ground with great difficulty. It is described in works on natural history as having a short round snout, a wide mouth, and a body very wide across the shoulders. It is further described as being very voracious. Yet there is nothing in these traits of person and character to detract from its estimable properties as an article of diet; and so long as it continues to secrete green fat, aldermen should not quarrel with the turtle either for the shortness of its legs or the rotundity of its body or the gluttony of its appetite.