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They work in the presence of the Indians, who visit the beach at a very early hour, and who call them mad tortoises. Notwithstanding the rapidity of their movements, they are then easily caught with the hand. The three encampments formed by the Indians, in the places indicated above, begin about the end of March or commencement of April.
I survey the whole space that stretches overhead; it is as desert as the shore was. Still my imagination carried me away amongst the wonderful speculations of palaeontology. Though awake I fell into a dream. I thought I could see floating on the surface of the waters enormous chelonia, preadamite tortoises, resembling floating islands.
The reptiles have shrunk to a few low forms, the small lizards, the crocodiles and alligators, the tortoises and turtles, and, as if to mark more clearly the banishment of this group from their old empire, the serpents, which are peculiarly degraded forms of reptiles which have lost the legs they once had, came to be the commonest reptiles of the earth.
Caterpillars thus frozen will become butterflies in due time. Spiders, and many other creatures, lie torpid during the winter, and then revive in the same way as dormice, bears, and marmots do." "Nurse, please will you tell me something about tortoises and porcupines?" said Lady Mary. "I cannot tell you a great deal about the tortoise, my dear," replied her nurse.
She added fragments of the shells of tortoises, and the liver of stags, animals tenacious of life, and the head and beak of a crow, that outlives nine generations of men.
"They are eaten alive . . ." said my father. "They are in shells like tortoises, but . . . in two halves." The delicious smell instantly left off affecting me, and the illusion vanished. . . . Now I understood it all! "How nasty," I whispered, "how nasty!" So that's what "oysters" meant! I imagined to myself a creature like a frog.
Their hearing, however, is more imperfect, but as during the mating season they have tiny, piping voices, this sense must be of some use. Water tortoises can remain beneath the surface for hours and even days at a time. In addition to the lungs there are two small sacs near the tail which allow the animal to use the oxygen in the water as an aid to breathing.
And in order to be engaged in action, I proceeded to the dreadful abode of the Danavas, furnished with the shell, the mail, and arrows, and taking my bow." And like unto flowing cliffs were seen on it heaving billows, now meeting together and now rolling away. And there were seen timingilas and tortoises and makaras like unto rock submerged in water.
Envoys are despatched to bring "their otherselves, the tortoises," from the sacred lake Kothluwalawa, to which the souls of the dead are believed to repair. When the creatures have thus been solemnly brought to Zuni, they are placed in a bowl of water and dances are performed beside them by men in costume, who personate gods and goddesses.
Large numbers of these little tortoises, about ten inches in length, are seen basking together on the logs or stones on the borders of lakes or streams. The slightest noise arouses them, when they slip off, splashing in all directions into the water. They swim with their little heads above the surface at a rapid rate, bearing a strong resemblance to water-snakes.
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