Important: Safety Warning
This page states that certain wild plants are safe to eat. Its identifications and edibility claims are more than a century old and in some cases simply wrong, and deadly look-alikes exist for many edible species. Never eat a wild plant on the strength of this text.
In addition, this page describes collecting wild birds' eggs, shooting birds for specimens, or similar practices. These activities are now illegal under wildlife-protection laws, including the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and they contributed to the decline of the very species described.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Turtle
in zoölogy, the popular name for any species of the Cheloniidæ. They may be distinguished by their long, compressed fin-shaped, non-retractile feet, with the toes inclosed in a common skin, from which only one or two claws project. The carapace is broad and much depressed so that when these animals are on shore, and are turned over on their backs, they cannot regain the natural position. Large interspaces between the extremities of the ribs, and TURTLE retracted within the shell; it is covered above with symmetrical horny shields, and the jaws are armed with sharp, horny sheaths. Turtles are marine LONG-NECKED TURTLE animals; their pinnate feet and light shell render them excellent swimmers.
They sometimes live at a great distance from land, to which they periodically return to deposit their soft-shelled eggs (from 100 to 250 in number) in the sand.
They are found in all the inter-tropical seas, and sometimes travel into the tem- HAWK'S-BILL TURTLE portions of the sternum always remain cartilaginous, so that the carapace is far lighter than in the tortoises. The head is large and globose, and cannot be SKELETON OF TURTLE perate zones. The flesh and eggs of all the species are edible, though the Indian turtles are less valuable in this respect than those of the Atlantic. The most highly valued of the family is the green turtle (Chelonia viridis), from which turtle soup is made. It attains a large size, sometimes from six to seven feet TURTLE DOVE long, with a weight of from 700 to 800 pounds. The popular name has no reference to the color of the carapace, which is dark olive, passing into dingy white, but to the green fat highly prized by epicures. The edible turtle of the East Indies (C. virgata) is also highly prized; but, according to Tennent, at certain seasons they "are avoided as poisonous, and some lamentable instances are recorded of death which was ascribed to their use." The hawk's-bill turtle (C. imbricata), which yields tortoiseshell, is also prized; but the flesh of the loggerhead turtle and of the leatherback is of little value. In printing, the segment plate in which a form is locked up in a type-revolving machine. The column-rules are wider at the top than at the bottom, to hold the type firmly, and are secured by screws.
The edge of the side stick has a series of beveled projections, and is pressed against the form by by a piece having similarly beveled projections and worked by a screw.