AN EXCESSIVE TURTLE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1570, 29 December 1883, Page 2

AN EXCESSIVE TURTLE.

-A few days ago (saysthe New.York Times of a recent, dato) an; American schooner met with a' remarkable, not to say unprecedented, turtle.., The reptile was sleeping peacefully'oil the surface "of the water in' the neighborhood of the banks,: ; and whenitj'was first seen it was supposed to:be;,the hull of a capsized'vessel; On-approafch-ing close to it, however, the schooner's people saw that the supposed hull -was a turtle about" 60fb longj: and; .iO£t broad, As it was decidedly larger than the schooner, the latter wisely forbtire to attempt to capture \i and 1 sailed away, leaving the turtle directly inthe path of the Atlantic steamers', any one of which vessels may : run into it.' ..The existence of gigantic, turtles of .'the dimensions of the one m question has never been suspected, chiefly- because such excessive animals, have 1 :' never before been seen. When we. remember that .a turtle ,60..feet' long and 40 feet wide must draw-i'at least 15 feet of water, we cau understand that such turtles have, never approached hear enough to the land tp be seen, much less to be pursued tod turned on their backs by' 'floating derricks. It is probable 1 that .they spend nearly all their time Below the surface of the water, coming, up to breathe only at night, With such habits it is no wonder that no one'has seen a 60ft turtle until the other.day. It the sea contains turtles as large as a small sized island, they must "be exceedingly dangerous to shipping'" V ft a steamer runs into the turtle seen.; by the American schooner, that steamer will be wrecked as certainly as were to run on one of the Scilly Islaildfl. Turtles, even when floating onthe'Burr face of the water, lie. so.low •iin bo seen with difficulty, and' as tlhey urry no side-lights, it is quite imposoible to see them after., darky,JPhe simple fact is that the commerce of. the world is at the mercy of the turtles, and we shall never know how many of the vessels that are reported "missing!' have struck on turtles and gone to the bottom without a moment's warning The experience of the captain arid crew of the American schooner alrejuly mentioned moy, however,, be interpreted as an evidence of the terrible effects of adulterated liquors. Pure - whisky, as is well known, leads to discoveries of sea' serpents. The liquor tlint results in gigantic turtles must bo a hqrriblo compound, and in the Merest of science the people of the American schooner should tell where they procured .their liquor, and submit a specimen of it—if any remains—to somo coinpent chemist for analysis.