smell.  It is powerful and fierce when molested.  One which was harpooned, on being hauled up to the boat seized the gunwale and left the marks of its beak deep in the wood.  The creature seems also to be endowed with greater vitality than the other species, and this fact may excite the wonder of those who have seen the heart of a green turtle pulsate long after removal from the body, and the limbs an hour after separation shrink from the knife and quiver.

The hawks-bill furnishes the tortoiseshell of commerce, and is much sought after.  The flesh is highly tainted with the specific flavour of turtle, and therefore objectionable, though blacks relish it.  Further north, in some localities, it is generally believed that the flesh of the hawks-bill may be imbued with a deadly poison.  Great care is exercised in the killing and butchering, lest a certain gland, said to be located in the neck or shoulder, be opened, as flesh cut with a knife which has touched the critical part becomes impregnated.  Here, though the blacks take precautions in the butchering a hawks-bill (being aware of its bad repute elsewhere), they have had no actual experience of the unwholesomeness of the flesh.  One old seafarer acknowledges that he nearly “pegged out” as the result of a hearty meal of the liver of a hawks-bill.  As is well known, fish edible in one region may be poisonous in another (Saville-Kent); the same principle may apply to the turtle.

The flesh of the luth or leathery turtle (DERMOCHELYS CORIACEA) which diets on fish, crustacea, molluscs, radiates, and other animals, causes symptoms of poisoning; but the luth does not appear to be common in this part of the Pacific, though it occurs in Torres Straits.

In a standard work on natural history it is asserted that the natives remove the overlapping plates of tortoiseshell from the hawks-bill by lighting a fire on the back of the creature, causing them to peel off easily.  “After the plates have been removed, the turtle is permitted to go free, and after a time it is furnished with a second set of plates.”  Surely this might be classed among the fabulous stories of Munchausen.  As the lungs of the turtle lie close to the anterior surface of the carapace, the degree of heat sufficient to cause the plates to come off would assuredly be fatal.  Possibly there is explanation at hand.  The turtle being killed, the carapace is removed and placed over a gentle fire, and then the plates are eased off with a knife.  But that method is not generally approved.  Professional tortoiseshell-getters either trust to the heat of the sun or bury the shell in clean sand, and when decomposition sets in, the valuable plates are detached freely.  Exposure to fire deteriorates the quality of the product unless great care is exercised.