TCD MS 10516 folio 64 verso
[12th October 1916] gerous to mankind.
Both species of tortoise can be captured with hook and line so freely as to be a nuisance to the fisherman. In the flood season they are swept far inland. As the waters recede they become isolated in pools. As these dessicate, the tortoises die in numbers and fill the air with the stench of their decaying bodies.
Though apparently so dull and stupid, I do not think the tortoise can be denied the gift of intelligence, that faculty which man would so often withhold from the humbler members of creation. Watch a tortoise effecting its escape and observe its powers of judgement. If * at the brink of the stream, it ¤ simply throws itself headlong into the water; but if, when alarmed, it is some little distance inland the tortoise un-
*it is disturbed ¤ escapes by simply throwing