Besides turning turtles, which is of course confined strictly to a certain season, the fishermen of the reef resort to another method, called pegging.  The instrument of capture is a three-sided peg, often made by cutting off the end of a file.  This is attached to a long line and fitted into a copper cap on the end of a long pole, the whole constituting an unbarbed spear.  Thus armed, the turtler sculls over the reef, striking the turtle either as it lies asleep on the bottom or as it rises to breathe.  The peg is hurled long distances with great skill and accuracy:  as soon as it strikes, the pole comes out, and the victim is managed by the line, often towing the dingy for a considerable distance.  The peg holds by suction; and, as it only enters the hard shell, and that only half an inch, the animal is not in the least injured for transportation to the North.

Key West is the head quarters of the Florida turtling-trade, and on the north shore of the island, where a shoal reef stretches away, a number of crawls have been from time immemorial used, being merely fences or enclosures in which the animals are penned until the time for shipment.  By far the greater number find their way to New York, being packed and crowded, often brutally, in the common fish-cars at the Fulton Market dock in such numbers that many are unable to rise, and consequently drown.  The greatest injustice, however, to the long-suffering turtle comes when the miserable animal is propped up before some restaurant door, bearing upon its broad carapace the grim assertion, “To be served this day.”

The green or loggerhead turtles are rarely seen north of Cape Florida.  The outer reef is their home, their range extending far to the south.  Old turtles, like fishes, often have strange companions.  They are covered with barnacles of various kinds; several remoras form their body-guard, clinging here and there as if part and parcel of their huge consort.  Often small fish allied to the mackerel accompany them, as does also the pilot-fish of the shark.  One large loggerhead pegged by the writer had its four flippers bitten off by the latter fishes so close to the shell that it could barely move along, and would undoubtedly soon have succumbed, although it is a common thing to find both green and loggerhead turtles minus parts of their locomotive organs.

The great leather turtle (Sphurgis coriacea), the largest of the tribe, is rarely seen, being seemingly a denizen of the high seas, and more commonly observed in colder waters; though Gosse is authority for the statement that they form their nests on the island of Jamaica.  The following account is from the Jamaica “Morning Journal” of April 13, 1846:  “The anxiety of the fishermen in this little village was aroused on the 30th of last month by the track of a huge sea-monster, called a trunk-turtle, which came on the sea-beach for the purpose of laying her eggs.  A search was made, when a hole in the