Fig. 79.–Emys orbicularis, European Pond-tortoise (left), and Clemmys leprosa, Iberian Water-tortoise (right). × ½.
What the jaws have got hold of is not allowed to escape again. The tortoise holds on and tears the prey to pieces with the sharp-clawed fingers. This takes a long time, only the scraped-off flesh and the intestines being eaten. The skeleton remains and sinks to the bottom, while in the case of a fish, the air-bladder floats away on the surface, and remains there as one of the surest signs of the existence of tortoises in that locality. The bones are cleaned with wonderful neatness. Some of my grass-snakes shared this fate, their backbones, with the hundreds of pairs of ribs, being picked or rather scraped clean, scarcely less well than if they had been prepared for a museum.
As a rule the prey must be in motion to be seized, unless the tortoise has watched it before, and even then the latter prefers to smell it before biting. In captivity they soon learn to eat meat, and they become very tame, but in their native haunts they are extremely shy and cautious. Fond of basking upon a stone or on the banks, with the four limbs sprawling, or with the hind-limbs stretched backwards, and with the webs spread out so as to offer as large a surface as possible to the rays of the sun, they lie motionless for hours and appear fast asleep. But the slightest noise, or any other sign of our approach, is sufficient to send them plumping into the water, and to make them scuttle along with unsuspected agility. Nothing but the audible plump of the flat body and the widening rings of the disturbed water indicate their presence. After a long time of waiting we give it up, and turn away. That very instant we see a little ripple, caused by the withdrawing of the tortoise, which had come to the surface and had been watching us, with only the nose and eyes peeping out of the water, the rest being concealed between the floating vegetation. Apparently they cannot see us well with their eyes still under water, owing to the difference of refraction, otherwise they would not peep out and then at once turn back. It is certainly not for the want of air, since they can remain below for many hours without breathing.
Although they generally feed in the water, they come on land when tame and hungry enough to take the offered food. Sometimes they make long migrations, perhaps because their old home is dried up or does not yield food enough. They hibernate during the cold season, buried in the mud, and they do not appear until the spring is well advanced. During the pairing season, on warm spring nights, they emit short piping sounds, and when they have found each other, the couple swim about together. The white, hard-shelled, long, oval eggs, averaging 25 to 15 mm., and about ten in number, are laid on land. This is a very laborious and curious business. The female having selected a suitable spot, not loose sand, but rather hard soil free from grass and other dense vegetation, prepares the ground by moistening it from the bladder and the anal water-sacs. Then it stiffens the tail and bores a hole with it, moving the tail but not the body. The hind-limbs then scoop out the hole, the broad feet moving alternately and heaping up the soil on the side, until the hole is about five inches deep, that is as far as the hind legs will reach. The eggs are laid at the bottom in one layer, divided and distributed by the feet. Lastly, the soil is put in again, and the tortoise, by repeatedly raising its body and falling down, stamps the soil firm and flat, roughens the surface a little with its claws, and leaves the nest to its fate. Nothing but an accident leads to its discovery. The young are hatched, according to locality and the kind of season, either in the same autumn or not until the next spring. Eggs laid in a garden at Kieff, in Russia, were hatched eleven months later. This implies hibernation of the embryo within the egg, and this is probably the usual course of events, resembling the conditions of the development of Sphenodon (cf. p. [299]). The pretty little creatures, scarcely larger than a shilling-piece, are exceedingly difficult to rear. They require a tank with green vegetation, stones to bask on and to hide under, and also dry ground and moss for a change. They eat flies, tiny worms, tadpoles, etc., greedily enough, but for some occult reasons they do less well than many another kind of water-tortoise. Miss Durham has, however, succeeded in rearing one, which is now in its fourth year; the shell is 2 inches long, and each shield shows three annual rings around the areola. This specimen spent the winters in an unheated room under moss, not in the water.
E. blandingi, the North American species, has a more elongated and decidedly higher carapace than its smaller European relation. The carapace is dull black with many pale yellowish spots; the plastron is yellow, with a large dark patch on the outer and hinder corner of each shield. The head is dark brown above, bright yellow below and on the throat, a contrast which gives this tortoise a striking appearance. This species is extremely voracious, becomes easily tame, and spends a great part of the day on land, hiding under grass to avoid great heat, and withdrawing into the water for the night.
Clemmys.–The plastron is immovably united with the carapace, and is devoid of any transverse hinge. The skull has a complete bony temporal arch. This genus, consisting of eight species, is otherwise very much like Emys, and is truly Periarctic.
Fig. 80.–Skull of Clemmys leprosa. × 3⁄2. A, dorsal view; B, from the left side; F, frontal; J, jugal; M, maxillary; Par, parietal; Pr.f, prefrontal; Pt.f, postfrontal; Q, quadrate; Qj, quadrato-jugal; Sq, squamosal.
C. leprosa s. sigris (Fig. 79).–The upper jaw has a median notch for the reception of the upturned point of the lower jaw; the cutting edges of the powerful beak are smooth. The shell is flat and long-oval, nowhere serrated. The plastron does not quite fill the box. In the young the shell is nearly round, and the horny shields form three series of keels, of which the lateral pair disappear early; the shields are olive-brown, each with an orange spot or streak; the plastron is dark brown, with a yellowish margin. The adult looks very different. The shell has become much more oval, with the greatest width behind the bridge. The long shields are smooth, and in elderly specimens are without any trace of the original connective rings of growth. The general colour of the shell is uniform pale olive-grey, inclining to yellow on the plastron. The ground-colour of the soft parts is olive-grey, but the sides of the head are adorned with orange-red or yellow marks, the patch between the eye and ear and three or four stripes on the neck being especially conspicuous. The limbs have pale yellowish streaks. All these markings are, however, subject to much individual variation. While, for instance, the half-grown creatures are distinctly agreeably coloured, often with a rich brown, nicely sculptured shell, and with conspicuous orange and yellow marks on the skin, the very old ones become rather ugly, the prevailing colour varying more and more into dull uniform pale olive-grey.