TCD MS 10516 folio 66 verso
[12th October 1916] On another occasion I found a nest of the Soft Shelled Tortoise. While examining some river shells, I suddenly noticed a tortoise resting motionless beneath the shelter of the bank and watching keenly all my actions. I disturbed the animal and found she was preparing to add a twentieth egg to nineteen others that lay carefully hidden away in a hollow beneath her. I wished to see the nature of the eggs while still in the ovary of the tortoise, but was quite unprepared, on opening the animal, to witness so astounding a manifestation of fertility. In the ovaries I counted twenty-two bright, fully developed, spherical yolks, needing only their coats of white and shell to complete the perfect egg; and, in addition, innumerable smaller ova, some the size of pins’ heads, some