The great leather turtle (_Sphurgis coriacea_), the largest of the tribe, is rarely seen, being seemingly a denizen of the high seas, and more commonly observed in colder waters; though Gosse is authority for the statement that they form their nests on the island of Jamaica. The following account is from the Jamaica "Morning Journal" of April 13, 1846: "The anxiety of the fishermen in this little village was aroused on the 30th of last month by the track of a huge sea-monster, called a trunk-turtle, which came on the sea-beach for the purpose of laying her eggs. A search was made, when a hole in the sand was discovered, about four feet deep and as wide as the mouth of a half-barrel, whence five or six dozen white eggs were taken out; the eggs were of different sizes, the largest the size of a duck's egg. On the morning of the 10th of this month, at half-past five o'clock, she was discovered by Mr. Crow, on the beach, near the spot where she first came up; he gave the alarm, when all the neighbors assembled and got her turned on her back. She took twelve men to haul her about two hundred yards. I went and measured her, and found her dimensions as follows: from head to tail, six feet six inches; from the outer part of her fore fin to the other end" (to the tip of the other?), "nine feet two inches; the circumference round her back and chest, seven feet nine inches; circumference of her neck, three feet three inches; the widest part of her fore fins, eighteen inches; her hind fins, two feet four inches in length. Her back is formed like a round top of a trunk, with small white bumps in straight lines, resembling the nails on a trunk; her color is variegated like the rainbow" (probably the living skin displayed opaline reflections); "there is no shell on her back, but a thick skin, like pump-leather." Some years since, a gigantic specimen came ashore at Lynn beach, where for a long time it formed an object of the greatest curiosity. It was over eight feet in length, and weighed nearly twenty-two hundred pounds. Instead of definite scales, as in other turtles, it had a shell composed of six plates, which formed longitudinal ridges extending from the head to the tail; the eye-openings were up and down, instead of lengthwise; the bill was hooked; and so many remarkable characteristics did it possess that many believed it to be a strange nondescript, and not a turtle.