Norris and Zwiefel (1950:4) saw two captive individuals of _T. o. luteola_ copulating on 12 August; copulation lasted two hours. Brumwell (1940:391-2) gave the following description of mating in _T. o. ornata_. A male pursued a female for nearly half an hour, first nudging the margins of her shell and later approaching her rapidly from the rear and hurling himself on her back in an attempt to mount, at the same time emitting a stream of liquid from each nostril. The liquid was presumably water; both sexes had imbibed water in a pond just before courtship began. Brumwell suggested that pressure on the plastron of the male had forced the water out his nostrils. The pair remained in the coital position for 30 minutes after the male had achieved intromission. In another instance, Brumwell (_loc. cit._) saw four males pursuing a single female, the males exhibiting the same behavior (nudging and lunging) outlined above. Males that attempted to mount other males were repelled by defensive snapping of the approached male. The female also snapped at some of the males that tried to mount her. One male was finally successful in mounting and was henceforth unmolested by the other males. Brumwell suggested that shell biting and tapping may be methods of sex-recognition. In the several instances of mating that I observed, the male, after mounting the shell of the female (Pl. 28), gripped her, with the first claws of his hind feet, just beneath her legs or on the skin of the gluteal region and, with the remaining three claws, gripped the posterior edges of her plastron. In most instances the female secured the male's legs by hooking her own legs around them. The coital position of _T. ornata_ seems to differ from that of _T. carolina_, at least in regard to the position of the male's legs. The coital positions of _T. carolina_ illustrated by Cahn (1937:94, Fig. 13) are physically impossible for _T. ornata_. In _T. ornata_ the pressure exerted on the male's legs by the female probably impairs circulation and probably is painful to the male, especially after coitus, when the male falls backward but is still held by the female. The heavily developed musculature of the legs of males may be an adaptation to strengthen the legs for this temporary period of stress. Evans (1953:191) and Cahn and Conder (1932:87-88) observed the hind legs of males of _T. carolina_ to be noticeably weakened after copulation, causing the males to remain inactive for several hours.