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Show 1899.] REPTILES O F T H E M A L A Y PENINSULA A N D SIAM. 621 happen to take a piece right out. The sudden way in which they shoot out and then retract their long necks, and their great strength, make them formidable animals. I have seen one of mine seize a stick pointed at it by a visitor and instantly break it in two, and one that I once had occasion to take for a drive in a carriage occupied itself in worrying a cushion and did not a little damage. Like Damonia subtrijuga, they are fond of eating blue mussels ; this was the only food I ever saw mine eating, though they were supplied with fish, frogs, and crustaceans (dead and alive), as well as with vegetables, though the Trionyx which Mr. Ridley keeps in Singapore eat rice. These turtles are eaten by the Chinese and by some classes of Siamese. The eggs are hard-shelled, white, and spherical. The young turtles are to be found during the latter half of July and in August; they try to bite lustily. Colour (in life). Above olive-brown, beneath white, head and neck with numerous distinct small yellow spots. Size. A n adult female from Bangkok measured :- Length of dorsal leather-shield 268 m m. Breadth „ „ 230 „ Length of head and neck 205 „ Hab. Burma, Siam, Cambodia, Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, Borneo. 23. PELOCHELYS CANTORIS Gray. Gymnopus indicus, Cantor, p. 10. Chitra indica, Giinth. Rept. Brit. Ind. p. 50, pl. vi. fig. C. Pelochelys cantoris, Blgr. Cat. Chel. etc. p. 253 (skull fig.). Cantor's Soft Turtle was described from a Penang specimen. Cantor writes of this species :-" Hab. Pinang, Malayan Peninsula (estuaries, sea-coast), rivers in India, Philippine Islands. At Pinang this species is frequently taken in the fishing-stakes. The Chinese inhabitants greatly relish this, as well as the preceding species of Gymnopus (i. e. Trionyx), as articles of food. Individuals weighing 240 lbs. occur in the Ganges, and others of gigantic dimensions are not uncommon at Pinang. It is very powerful, and of ferocious habits." I obtained a specimen from the Kedah river; the dry and somewhat shrivelled dorsal shield measured 641 m m . in length and 552 in breadth. But Cantor measured a much larger individual, whose " shell" was 940 m m . in length. This Kedah specimen is apparently the first record of this species in Siamese territory, and it probably also occurs in Siam proper, as a half-grown specimen in the Siamese Museum, caught in the river Menam, appears to belong to this species, and also a little Soft Turtle, caught on the 29th March, 1897, in the Bangpakong river, a little below Kabin, may be ; Mr. Boulenger writes of this individual:-" I doubt the Trionyx being Pelochelys cantoris, but the affinities of so young a specimen cannot be well understood." |