ther deposit on the top, and so on until the pit is full. Egg-laying
comes earlier on the Amazon than on the Napo, taking place in August and
September. The tracaja, a smaller species, lays in July and August; its
eggs are smaller and oval, but richer than those of the great turtles.

[Footnote 171: The natives have this notion about the land-tortoise,
that by throwing it three times over the head, the liver (the best part)
will be enlarged.]

The mammoth tortoise of the Galapagos lays an egg very similar in size
and shape to that of the Tortaruga, but a month later, or in October.
The hunting of turtle eggs is a great business on the Amazon. They are
used chiefly in manufacturing oil (manteca) for illumination. Thrown
into a canoe, they are broken and beaten up by human feet; water is then
poured in, and the floating oil is skimmed off, purified over the fire
in copper kettles, and finally put up in three-gallon earthen jars for
the market. The turtles are caught for the table as they return to the
river after laying their eggs. To secure them, it suffices to turn them
over on their backs. The turtles certainly have a hard time of it. The
alligators and large fishes swallow the young ones by hundreds; jaguars
pounce upon the full-grown specimens as they crawl over the plaias, and
vultures and ibises attend the feast. But man is their most formidable
foe. The destruction of turtle life is incredible. It is calculated that
fifty millions of eggs are annually destroyed. Thousands of those that
escape capture in the egg period are collected as soon as hatched and
devoured, "the remains of yolk in their entrails being considered a
great delicacy." An unknown number of full-grown turtles are eaten by
the natives on the banks of the Maranon and Solimoens and their
tributaries, while every steamer, schooner, and little craft that
descends the Amazon is laden with turtles for the tables of Manaos,
Santarem, and Para. When we consider, also, that all the mature turtles
taken are females, we wonder that the race is not well-nigh extinct.
They are, in fact, rapidly decreasing in numbers. A large turtle which
twenty years ago could be bought for fifty cents, now commands three
dollars. One would suppose that the males, being unmolested, would far
outnumber the other sex, but Bates says "they are immensely less
numerous than the females." The male turtles, or _Capitaris_, "are
distinguishable by their much smaller size, more circula