The turtle that is consumed in this country is the green species, from the West Indies. The creatures are imported by Mr. T. K. Bellis, who will not hesitate to tell you that of edible turtles the green variety is the best. Mr. Bellis imports some three thousand turtles a year. They arrive in batches of one hundred or more every fortnight by the Royal Mail steamers from Kingston, Jamaica, and are obtained from the coral reefs lying to the north of the island of Jamaica. Twelve to fifteen small schooners are employed in the trade, and upwards of a hundred and twenty men. [Illustration: A CONSIGNMENT OF TURTLES AT A LONDON TERMINUS. [_From a Photograph._]] These fishers of strange “fish” (the turtle’s technical name) stretch nets of twine from rock to rock, and the moment the turtle feels itself entangled it clings tenaciously to the meshes, and is then hauled to the surface. The schooners in due time return to Kingston with from eighty to a hundred and fifty of these remarkable creatures, which are promptly deposited in palisaded enclosures, flooded at every tide by the sea. Here they are fed upon a certain kind of herbage known as “turtle grass,” and taken as required. The bringing of these creatures overseas is a very delicate business, and frequently sixty out of a hundred perish _en route_, in spite of the most elaborate precautions, such as the constant spraying of salt water daily on board the mail steamer, and the use of foot warmers for the turtles in the railway vans from Southampton to Waterloo. Before now, Mr. Bellis has lost eighty-eight turtles out of a shipment of a hundred. This susceptibility to travel is one of the most remarkable things about the turtle. If you are anxious to transport him alive it is a hundred to one he perishes of cold, but if you do succeed in getting him home the difficulty then is to kill him. The vitality of this strange sea creature after decapitation is almost beyond belief. Mr. Bellis once sent a large turtle to an hotel in Newcastle. The _chef_ cut the turtle’s head off and hung the body upside down to bleed. Twenty-four hours after that turtle knocked down a man cook with one blow of its fin! The green turtle is not a vicious creature to handle, like its snapping Japanese brother, but its fins are very strong, and one blow from them is quite sufficient to break a man’s arm.