The Arizona sentinel., 1886-01-23
READING FOR THE YOUNG.
BOXED UP.

II any of my readers have ever seen the boys of the Country Week" re-
 turning from their weeks run and roll in the green fields, they will have seen
 an amusing sight. These poor little
 waifs, born in the slums of the city,
 and most of whom have never seen the verdant meadows or heard the gur- gling brooks, come back not only full of delightful memories, but most of them bringing some prize from the treasure-box of the country paradise. And the most valued of all prizes seems to be land turtle. Every little urchin who has been lucky enough to secure one of these queer creatures clings to it as proudly as if it was one of King SolOmon's jewels, while his less fort unate companions gather around him with curious and envious eyes.
 Boys like turtles; that may be set down as an axiom. Whether turtles like boys is another question. A turtle is not much of thinker. Give him something to eat, and let him alone and he will get along almost any, where. And if disturbed too much he can shut himself up in his shell like a 'jack-in-a-box" and laugh at his tor mentors.
 And, by the way, as most people know the turtle mainly by the outside, and as young and old folks generally are interested in this comical creature, some short account of what there is in- side the turtles box may not be with out interest.
 The turtle-or the tortoise, to give the little crawler it's proper name-is not the only animal in box. Oys- ters, clans, crabs and many other creatures are boxed-up animals. But they all differ greatly from the tortoise, which is, in fact, very distant cousin of ourselves; that is to say, it has a backbone and ribs, as we have. The lower orders of animals have no inside bones; all their hard parts are outside their bodies. It is the peculiarity of the vertebrate Cor backbone) animals to have their hard parts inside, while their outside is of soft flesh, or is covered with scales, as in the fishes and rep | tiles.
 But the turtle is peculiar in that it has bones both inside and outside. In this peculiar animal the bones come l through the flesh, and spread over the body outside. The turtles she'll is made up of its backbone and ribs, which are spread out broad and flat over its back, the ribs joining at their edges. This tent of bone is covered with a thin, almost transparent, beau- | tifully tinted coating, which is the tor toise shell from which such pretty combs, knife-handles, and like orna- mental objects are made.
 The lower shell is made in the same manner. Here the breast-bones comes out, and spreads into broad, flat shell. Thus the tortoise is actually shut up in a box made of its own bones. This is usually joined together above and below, except where the head, tail and legs come out. And these can be with drawn at will, and the shell closed by strong muscles, until the creature be- comes like an old-time knight shut up in his iron box of armor
 The head is also covered with coat ing of horny plates, and the edges of these plates at the jaws do duty as teeth, since the tortoise has none of these useful organs. These horny jaws are often saw-tOothed, so that they cut up food very we'll.
 Our little land tortoise CistudO Cdro- hraa, to give it its scientific name is by no means confined to Carolina, but may be found everywhere along the Atlantic coast from Maine to Flori- da. It is very abundant in the pine oeA AloC rc Sc H<N almost everybody everywhere through out the region named.
 The she'll of the box tortoise is about six and half inches long by four and a half wide. It is more rounded than is usual with turtles. and has a remark able variety of colors and markings. Its most common cOlors are yellowish- brown and bright yellow, but these are so variously arranged that it is nearly or quite impossible to find two tortoises alike.
 In its wild state it feeds on insects, and probably on some species of plants; but when confined it very quickly makes itself at home, and will eat nearly everything offered it, such as bread, potatoes, apples, and other civilized fare.
 One thing remarkable about it is its wonderful length of life. We are not surprised to hear that the huge ele- phant can live for two hundred years; there is stuff enough in the great beast to keep it going for centuries. Yet it |. is hard to conceive that little crawl ing tortoise can live as long as an ele- phant, though writers declare that it can. I doubt, however, if any single observer has watched tortoise for two centuries.
 There is one way of telling turtles age, and that is by cuttinga date on it's shell. The inscription will remain during its whole life. But as it is not uncommon for roguish boys to date such inscriptions twenty years or more back, they are not fully to be trusted.
 Yet all boys are not rogues, and we can relate one remarkable and we'll attested instance of this character. MT. William Eyre, gentleman of Chester, Pa, relates that when he was boy of ten he caught land tortoise and cut his initials on its under shell. Going out afterward for a ride, he took the tortoise with him, and left it at place ten miles away. That was the last he saw of Master Tortoise until he was an old gentleman of seventy, when, to his surprise, he found the identical creat- ure in his own garden. There were the initials, which he recognized as un- doubtedly his own handiwork.
 In this incident, which have good reason to believe actually occurred, the long life of the little creature is only