In the several instances of mating that I observed, the male, after mounting the shell of the female ([Pl. 28]), gripped her, with the first claws of his hind feet, just beneath her legs or on the skin of the gluteal region and, with the remaining three claws, gripped the posterior edges of her plastron. In most instances the female secured the male's legs by hooking her own legs around them. The coital position of T. ornata seems to differ from that of T. carolina, at least in regard to the position of the male's legs. The coital positions of T. carolina illustrated by Cahn (1937:94, Fig. 13) are physically impossible for T. ornata.
In T. ornata the pressure exerted on the male's legs by the female probably impairs circulation and probably is painful to the male, especially after coitus, when the male falls backward but is still held by the female. The heavily developed musculature of the legs of males may be an adaptation to strengthen the legs for this temporary period of stress. Evans (1953:191) and Cahn and Conder (1932:87-88) observed the hind legs of males of T. carolina to be noticeably weakened after copulation, causing the males to remain inactive for several hours.
Evans (op. cit.) observed 72 matings of T. carolina and divided the process into three phases as follows: 1) circling, pushing and biting by the male; 2) mounting (female with shell closed); and, 3) coition (female with shell open). Penn and Pottharst (1940:26) reported that captive T. carolina in New Orleans mated chiefly under conditions of optimum temperature (21 to 27° C.) and high humidity; some matings took place in a pool of water. Males pushed females about after mating, often rolling them over several times.
Because ornate box turtles observed by me were able easily to right themselves from an inverted position on substrata of all kinds, males left lying on their backs after copulation are probably in no danger of perishing in this position, as was suggested by Allard (1939) for T. carolina.
Insemination
Oviducts of several females were flushed by means of a pipette to determine whether they contained sperm. Approximately half of the females captured in May, 1956, had sperm in their oviducts, but females captured in June and July did not. Sperm flushed from the oviducts were in clumps of several hundred and showed no sign of motility a few minutes after the female was anesthetized with chloroform. No sperm were found in the oviducts of immature females but one female of nearly adult size was observed in copulation with a mature male.
Thorough examination of microscopic sections of oviduct (taken at various times in the season of activity) usually revealed a few sperm lodged in the folds ([Pl. 19, Fig. 8]) of the cephalic as well as the caudal portion of the tube, but no specialized seminal receptacles such as occur in snakes (Fox, 1956) were present. Fertilization without reinsemination probably occurs in T. ornata. Ewing (1943) and Finneran (1948:126) reported that females of T. carolina produced fertile eggs for periods of four and two years, respectively, after being removed from all contact with males.
Sexual Cycle of Males
Testes were preserved in each month from April to October. The following description of spermatogenesis is based chiefly on material collected in 1955, although testes were preserved also in 1954. Comparison of material obtained in 1954 and 1955 revealed that spermatogenesis began earlier and was more advanced on any given date in 1955 than in 1954.
Testes of mature individuals are pale yellow and slightly oblong. The epididymis is ordinarily dark brown or black and contrasts sharply with the color of the testes. Size of testes was expressed as the average length (greatest diameter) of both testes. Testes are smallest in April, immediately after emergence from hibernation, and largest in early September ([Pl. 20, Figs. 3-4]). They are nearly spherical when of maximum size; increase in bulk, therefore, is relatively greater than the increase in size shown in [Figure 3]. They increase in size from April until early June, recede during most of June, and again increase in size in July and August. They remain large from early September until hibernation is begun, becoming only slightly smaller in late September and October.