Craning

When arrived at its greatest magnitude, the upper shell is nearly eighteen inches in length, and ten or twelve inches in breadth; the back is very high, and the shell of a very hard bony substance, consisting of many regular compartments, united by sutures, in the manner of the other species of tortoise, and covered with thin horny plates. The nether or belly shell is large, and regularly divided transversely into five parts: these compartments are not knit together like the sutures of the skull, or the back shell of the tortoise, but adhere, or are connected together by a very ridgy horny cartilage, which serves as hinges for him to shut up his body within his shell at pleasure. The fore part of the belly shell towards its extremity is a little bifid; the posterior division of the belly shell is likewise pretended backwards considerably, and is deeply bifurcated.

Florida Tortoises, William Bartram, early-nineteenth-century explorer of the American South, in A World of Turtles: A Literary Celebration, edited by Gregory McNamee and Luis Alberto Urrea. Photo taken in one of the entrances to the Providence Public Library, RI