THE COMMON TORTOISE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), 3 August 1881, Page 4

THE COMMON TORTOISE.

When a single dealer in imported animal? advertises no fewer than twenty-five thousand tortoises alive, at twenty-four stamps a pair, or offers to sell them to retail dealers "at a low prife by the oast," and when they are cried about the streets of London at sixpence each and upwards, according to size and loveliness, we cannot be far wrong in regarding tortoises as domestic pets, whose history will not be without interest to many besides those who are their poslossors. The tortoise usually seen in this country is the well-known species called by naturalists Testudo graca, the common or Greek tortoise, a native of almost all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. from the Greciafi Archipelago westward to Corsica and Sardinia, and extending also all along thfi.nortli Coast of Africa. It is also exceedingly common in the Holy Land, iwnWe it is cooked and eaten by the natives, | who also use its eggs, which are about as large as a pigeon's, and are covered with a hard white shell. The form of the tortoise is well-known, but its singular structure is= not so generally recognised. It is in many respects very peculiar; its ribs, which form tho bony arch on its baok, are outside the body, being only covered with the horny shell, whilst the shoulder-blndes are inside tbe ribs, instead of being, as in other animals, outside them ; the jaws have no teeth, but, like those of a bird, are covered •with horn, and form a short beak. The tortoise feeds entirely on vegetables, and does best in this country if into a garden where it catsuit its own taste, eating grass, clover, danaelion, lettuce, &c. Its appetite is very capricious 5 for months together it will not often to the great distress of the who make earnest inquiries of such of their friend? as are learned in natural history as to what they shall give their tor, toises, who have not fed for weeks. In thr winter, tortoises, if in a garden where the ground is light, will dig a hole and bury themselves below the reach of frost; but it Is as well to take them into the house before the very cold weather sets in, as a hard frost kills them. When cared for, in favorable localities, as the south of England, they will live a great number of years. That described with so much accuracy by Gilbert White, in his ' Natural History of S'elborne,' survived its owner, and died in tbe spring of 1794, after living in England 54years. Into this country tortoises are imported in very large numbers, coming over in casks which are securely headed down, and the animals are thus confined in the most uncomfortable manner during the voyage. Of course some 'die, and from the decay of those that are dead, and the dirt of those that are living, the stench on opening the casks is said to be 'horrible. But ns soon as the tortoises are washed from their filth they begin to eat, if the weather is warm, and seem to have suffered little from the rough treatment to which they have been subjected. It may interest those of our readers who use combs to know that the so-called tortoiseshell of which they are frequently made does not oorae from the back of a tortoise, but is procured from a marine animal, the hawksbill turtle. —Household Words.