Note 61 — QUEER FISH.

Sinbad the sailor saw “a bird that cometh forth from a sea-shell and layeth its eggs and hatcheth them upon the surface of the water and never cometh forth upon the sea upon the face of the earth.” If the tortoise breeds birds time enough is vouchsafed it for that work. Grose speaks of the shells of two tortoises: one in the library at Lambeth Palace that was brought there alive in 1633, and died of the frost in 1753; the other that was brought to Fulham in 1628, and died in the same year as the other. “What were the ages of these tortoises at the time they were placed in the above gardens is not known.”—Olio. 288.