THE EGYPTIAN TURTLE.
Cum ventre humano tibi negotium est, qui nec ratione mitigatur,
nec prece ullâ flectitur.—LIVY.
It is hard lines for an Egyptian turtle when he once gets turned on his
back in Aboukir Bay. After that, for the remaining term of his natural
life, it is all Ramadan with him, after sunset as well as after sunrise.
He is carried to Alexandria, and sold there, if a fine well-grown
reptile, for half a sovereign: the smaller reptiles go for less. He is
put on board a P. and O. boat, and carried to Southampton, all the way on
his back, for another half sovereign. Add to this whatever one may have
to pay for his railway journey, and you may take him home with you, and
two or three more with him for your friends, at no great cost. Though
perhaps it would be hardly worth while to give a turtle to one who knows
no other way of having him cooked than converting him into soup.
Something ought to be done, and might be done to mitigate their long fast
from Aboukir Bay to London. At sea, gourmandizing is the order of the
day; but the turtle on board are famishing all the while. It might not
be ill done, if those, whose only occupation is eating, and then eating
again, were to give a thought to the difference in this matter between
themselves and those of their fellow-travellers who are getting nothing
at all to eat. It makes the matter worse that we inflict starvation on
the very creature we are contemplating as a feast for ourselves. It is no
justification to say, learnedly, that Chelonians can dispense with food
for long periods. It is bad for all concerned. It is morally hardening
to those who inflict unnecessary suffering, and to those—the passengers
on the P. and O. boats—who witness its effects, progressing regularly
from day to day. As the poor wretches lie on their backs—there were about
fifty on board the boat I came home by—you see that the plastron, that is
the name the belly shell goes by, is changing its shape. At first it is
convex. It gradually, as the fasting is prolonged, loses its convexity,
and becomes flat. This must be bad, but there is worse yet to come. Times
goes on, and what had become flat, begins to sink, and becomes concave.
The fifty owners of these shrinking and subsiding stomachs must have
found the process very pinching: and the more so as they had nothing else
in particular to think about while lying all this time on their backs.
The alterations of shape they have been passing through measured their
sufferings. They had never themselves done anything so bad to what they
had fed on. How could they without reason?