THE VITALITY OF A TURTLE.
By Frank T. Bullen
[Frank T. Bullen, in Leslie's Monthly for March.] ALMOST alone among God's creatures, the turtle has but a single enemy—man. It does not seem to matter to the turtle whether he stays beneath the surface for an hour or a week, nor does it trouble him to spend an equal time on land, if the need arises. He is neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, yet his flesh partakes of the characteristics of all three. Eating seems a mere superfluity with him, since for weeks at a time he may be headed up in a barrel (with the bung out) and emerge after his long fast apparently none the worse for his enforced abstinence from food, from light, and almost from air. And, finally, it may truly be said that, of all the higher, warm-blooded organisms, there are none so tenacious of life as the turtle. I can truly say that I have seen the flesh cleared out of a turtle shell and, hung upon a tree, where for hours the quivering, convulsive movements of the muscles went on. Not only so, but on one occasion only the head and tail were left attached to the shell. Some time had elapsed since the meat had been cut out of the carapace, and no one could have imagined that any life remained in the extremities. But a young Dane, noticing that the down-hanging head had its mouth wide open, very foolishly inserted two fingers between those horny mandibles. They closed, and our shipmate was two fingers short; the edges of the turtle's jaws had taken them off clean, with only the muscular power remaining in the head. Signor Redi once cut a turtle's head off, and noted that it lived for twenty-three days without a head, and another, whose brain he removed, lived for six months, apparently unconscious that it had suffered any loss.