The green turtle, with thin dovetailing plates, is the most plentiful and valued principally for food.  But all green turtle are not acceptable.  An old bull is so rank, that “there is no living near it—­it would infect the North Star!” There are many Europeans who cannot relish even good green turtle, however tender, delicate, and sweet it may be.  The worthy chaplain of Anson’s fleet who “wrote up” the famous voyages, has some shrewd observations on the subject of green turtle, which he refers to as the most delicious of all flesh, “so very palatable and salubrious,” though proscribed by the Spaniards as unwholesome and little less than poisonous.  He suggests that the strange appearance of the animal may have been the foundation of “this ridiculous and superstitious aversion.”  Perhaps the poor Spaniards of those days happened in the first instance upon an ancient bull, or a hawks-bill, and tapped the poison gland, or a loggerhead or a luth, and came ever after to entertain, with right good cause, a holy terror of turtle, irrespective of species.

An interesting phase in the life-history of the green turtle is the deception the female employs when about to lay eggs.  Her “nests” are shallow pits in the sand.  She may make several during a hasty visit to a favourite beach, while postponing the laying until the following day.  Whether this is a conscious stratagem by which the turtle hopes to mislead and bewilder other animals partial to the eggs, or merely a caprice—­one of those idle fancies which the feminine part of animated Nature frequently indulge in at a time when their faculties are at unusual tension—­does not appear to be quite understood.  When serious business is intended, the turtle scoops new pits, leaving some of them partially and others quite unfilled.  These also appear to be intended to delude.  That in which the eggs are deposited is filled in and the surface smoothed and flattened, and in cases where the nest is any distance beyond the limits of high-water, it is frequently carelessly covered with grass and dead leaves.  The heat of the sun hatches the eggs.  But the guile of the turtle is limited.  However artfully the real nest may be concealed, the tracks to and fro as well as the tracks to and from the many counterfeits are as unmistakable, until the wind obliterates them, as the tracks of a treble-furrow plough.  The chances against an unintellectual lover of turtle eggs discovering a fresh nest off-hand are in exact ratio to the number of deceptive appearances.  In a few days all the tracks are blotted out, and then none but those skilled or possessed of keen perception may detect the nest.  Blacks probe all the likely spots with spears, and soon fix on the right one.