Beale’s Terrapin or Turtle: An Endangered Species in Hong Kong

The freshwater chelonians, terrapins in English usage and turtles in American, of China and south-east Asia generally are in big trouble. Extensive trade for the human food and ‘medicine’ markets, the pet market, as well as loss of habitat have brought many to the status of ‘Endangered’.

As a result of reading a paper on one of the species in Vietnam I found a video taken recently in Hong Kong of Beale’s Terrapin, Sacalia bealei, where they are very rare and strictly protected. They are nocturnal, occurring in and around mountain streams. The location of sightings is being kept secret because it is thought poaching may still be going on.

Beale’s Terrapin was first described and named by John Edward Gray at the British Museum in 1831. Of the members of the Beale family who worked in India and China, the most likely candidate for the eponym is Thomas Beale (ca 1775-1841) a wealthy merchant in Macau who kept a large collection of exotic birds, including a bird-of-paradise, at his mansion. He with his partners in Magniac & Co (which morphed into the mighty hong, Jardine, Matheson & Co) dealt in opium, cotton and tea. For a time he was immensely wealthy but after dealing in opium futures and investing in some dodgy businesses in Brazil he ended up owing the East India Company the equivalent of many millions of pounds. His body was found washed ashore several weeks after he disappeared from his house.

John Reeves (1774-1856) sent the specimens back to London. He  was working largely in Macau as Inspector of Tea for the East India Company. Gray named Reeves’s Terrapin, Chinemy reevesi, after him, also in the 1831 publication.

The species is sometimes called Beale’s Four-eyed Terrapin because of the eye-like spots on the top of the head. However, since another currently-recognised species from further south in China, Laos and Vietnam, Sacalia quadriocellata, is usually known as the Four-eyed Terrapin, it seems better just to use Beale’s for the species from further north. Just to confuse matters, the two were often considered the same species with the Four-eyed as Sacalia (originally Clemmys) bealei quadriocellata). Both forms have four ‘eye’ spots. Mitochondrial DNA analysis suggests two species but I am not wholly convinced they constitute more than one’ biological species’.

It was not until 1977 that one was found in the wild in Hong Kong, or at least recognised as such, a point I will come back to later.

My mind was taken back to late 1966 or early 1967 when a lecturer in biology at Hong Kong Baptist College brought some terrapins she had bought in a market in Kowloon over on the Star Ferry to HKU. She left them for me to have a good look at. After I returned them she was going to release them somewhere in the New Territories. I know she was keeping a regular eye on the terrapins appearing in the markets and I suspect she rescued more. Unfortunately and infuriatingly, I cannot remember her name and our correspondence has also been lost.

The most interesting species she had acquired were Beale’s Terrapin which we could see seemed to occur in two colour forms. I see that this variation is now ascribed to a difference between the sexes. The male is what was called the ‘pink’ form, with dark brown or black with dark spots and squiggles especially on the leading edge. The neck has pink stripes and the iris of the eye is also pink. The female is the ‘yellow’ form; the carapace is yellowish-brown; the stripes on the neck are yellow, as is the iris.

We photographed the individuals on the roof of the later-demolished Northcote Science Building. Unfortunately I used Agfacolor CT18 film which deteriorates markedly with age. However, I have three photographs which are worth showing here. The ocelli or eye spots can be seen in what is obviously a female—a feisty female. She shot her neck out to bite the rubber gloves my wife had in her hand and was about to put on since she was trying to keep her hands dry while terrapin wrangling. The rubber gloves make an accidental appearance in several photographs at that time since her (wife, not terrapin) hands were suffering the effects of exposure to the histologist’s favourite solvent, xylol (xylene). The ones I photographed were around 13 cm or 5”, not far off the maximum length of about 18 cm.

Beale's Terrapin - male

Same individual as above

Beale's Terrapin - female
Note the 'eye' spots on top of the head

It was impossible to find out if the ones that appeared in the Kowloon market (we never saw this species in Hong Kong Central Market which we kept an eye on if in town) had been caught in Kong Kong or had been brought in from China. Since they had not then been found in the wild in Hong Kong we assumed they had been brought over the border.

More information and modern photographs can be found here.

This is the video I found:

While it is true that the number of people looking for reptiles in Hong Kong increased markedly in the 1970s, with many more species, especially snakes, being found, I cannot help wondering how many Beale’s Terrapins my friend bought in the market and then released. And did others do the same? So is it just within the bounds of possibility that at least some of the Beale’s Terrapins living in Hong Kong are descended from those released individuals? Could there have been an unrecorded but successful re-introduction?

Beolens B, Watkins M, Grayson M. 2011. The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

Karsen SJ, Lau M W-N, Bogadek A. 1998. Hong Kong Amphibians and Reptiles. Second Edition. Hong Kong: Provisional Urban Council

Le MD, McCormack TEM, Hoang HV, Duong HT, Nguyen TQ, Ziegler T, Nguyen HD, Ngo HT. 2020. Threats from wildlife trade: The importance of genetic data in safeguarding the endangered Four-eyed Turtle (Sacalia quadriocellata). Nature Conservation 41, 91-111. https://doi.org/10.3897/natureconservation.41.54661

Rovinj: The Sheffield Zoology Field Trip in 1964. Part Three. Reptiles and Amphibians

Algyroides nigropunctatus
from Hellmich

In writing about Sheffield Zoology’s first field course in Rovinj now in Croatia and then part of Yugoslavia at Easter 1964, my mind wandered into the difficulties we encountered in identifying the reptiles and amphibians from the surrounding countryside and town. With the wealth of information now available both in print and online it must be difficult to appreciate that nearly 60 years ago the only source on European species in English was a book by Walter Hellmich¹ published in 1962. I took that with me.

Some specimens were easy to identify from the limited number of illustrations and descriptions. But a juvenile snake (later identified as the Balkan Whip Snake) and what seemed to be one, but possibly two, species of lizard was more problematical. They ended up, and I cannot remember how, with a GP in Wolverhampton, Dr John V. Tranter² who was very active in amateur herpetological circles in the West Midlands. He got hold of a copy of the standard German checklist³ of the time by Robert Mertens and Heinz Wermuth as well as consulting Boulenger’s catalogues of specimens in the British Museum. He found all the unknowns, including those I suspected from the descriptions in Hellmich were the Dalmatian Wall Lizard. That species, originally Lacerta melissellensis⁴ but now Podarcis melissellensis, is now well-known to be polymorphic. In short there were two forms of this species around Rovinj, with one more common than the other. The least common bore a striking resemblance in terms of coloration to the Italian Wall Lizards seen and collected in the area but of lighter build and with smaller, less-pointed jaws.

We finally identified all the species (with current scientific names shown):

Bufo bufo. Common Toad

Bufotes viridis. Green Toad

Hyla arborea. Common Tree Frog

Lissotriton vulgaris. Smooth or Common Newt

Algyroides nigropunctatus. Dalmatian Algyroides, Keeled Lizard

Podarcis muralis. Common Wall Lizard

Podarcis siculus. Italian Wall Lizard

Podarcis melissellensis. Dalmatian Wall Lizard

Pseudopus apodus. Glass Lizard. Glass ‘Snake’, Scheltopusik

Hierophis gemonensis. Balkan Whip Snake

Podarcis sicula campestris
from Hellmich

In our meanderings through the countryside during the late afternoons until, on some days, dusk, we encountered almost nobody. On the edges of the town, the local human inhabitants were at first wary but after establishing that we were not Germans were friendly and helpful. Sons and daughters learning english at school were summoned to translate as best they could and their fathers and grandfathers became even friendlier when I told them that my father had not only been stationed on the island of Vis and had met Tito and his partisans but that he had been through Croatia in the back of an army lorry as far south as Pula in 1945. Eventually the conversation turned to reptiles and they explained to me that in late March only the small lizards and snakes appear from hibernation. In April-May, they said, we could have expected to see larger lizards and snakes as well.

As a matter of interest, I wondered recently what other reptiles are known to occur in the area around Rovinj. I looked at the distribution maps in the 2016 Field Guide⁵ and came up with the following list in addition to those shown above:

Salamandra salamandra. Fire Salamander

Triturus carnifex. Italian Crested Newt

Bombina variegata. Yellow-bellied Toad

Rana dalmatina. Agile Frog

Pelophylax kl. esculenta. Edible Frog

Pelophylax ribibundus. Marsh Frog

Testudo hermanni. Hermann’s Tortoise

Emys orbicularis. European Pond Terrapin

Tarentola mauritanica. Moorish Gecko

Hemidactylus turcicus. Turkish Gecko

Lacerta viridis, Eastern Green Lizard

Zootoca vivipara. Viviparous Lizard

Slow Worm. Anguis fragilis

Hierophis viridiflavus. Western Whip Snake

Elaphe quatuorlineata. Four-lined Snake

Zamensis longissimus. Aesculapian Snake

Coronella austriaca. Smooth Snake

Telescopus fallax. Cat Snake

Natrix natrix. Grass Snake

Natrix tessellata. Dice Snake

Malpolon insignitus. Eastern Montpelier Snake

Vipera ammodytes. Nose-horned Viper

There are a number of reports, mainly from amateur German and Austrian herpetologists, on field trips made to the same area. The nomenclature varies a little because there has been argument over whether, for example, it is the Eastern or Western Green Lizard (L.bilineata) that occurs there while the status of pool frogs, Pelophylax, remains problematical.

We have never been back to Rovinj. Looking at the area on Google Earth there seems to have been considerable expansion of the town. The countryside looks to have been tidied up and I wonder how many areas of scrub with large boulders inhabited by Algyroides have survived. I shall never forget walking along a country lane and hearing a noise which sounded like a huge flock of geese. Only as we got nearer and found no geese did we realise the sound was coming from the bushes and small trees surrounding a pond. The noise was being emitted by male tree frogs, gathered in the early spring waiting for females (a few were around the edges of the pond) to arrive.

European Tree Frog

Green Toad

Common Toad

The above photographs were taken with my Rolleiflex 4 x 4 on Agfacolor CT18 reversal film. Lighting was from a flashbulb. A more unsuitable camera for close-ups would be hard to imagine because of the nature of a twin-lens reflex. The camera was focused through the viewing lens and then raised by the distance between the viewing and taking lens to remove the effect of parallax. Animals could and did absent themselves from the scene while that shift was being made, resulting in a wasted frame.

1 Walter Hellmich (1906-1974) was Chief Keeper of the Zoological Collection of the State Museum in Munich. His book was originally published in German in 1956 (Die Lurche Und Kriechtiere Europas. Heidelberg: Carl Winter). The English version is: Hellmich W. 1962. Reptiles and Amphibians of Europe. (English Editor Alfred Leutscher). London: Blandford.

2 Died 2 November 2014, aged 79

3 Mertens R, Wermuth H. 1960. Die Amphibien und Reptilien Europas. Frankfurt: Kramer. Robert Mertens (1894-1975) and Heinz Wermuth (1918-2002) had revised an earlier checklist by Mertens and Lorenz Müller (1868-1953) (the latter was Hellmich’s mentor in Munich). There was at the time an inordinate fondness for describing subspecies, an enthusiasm I do not share.

4 Named for Melisello, now called Brusnik, an islet near Vis.

5 Speybroeck J, Beukema W, Bok B, Voort J van der, Velikov I. 2016. Field Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of Britain and Europe. London: Bloomsbury.

Peaker M, Peaker SJ. 1968. Spring herpetofauna of the Rovinj area (Istria, Yugoslavia). British Journal of Herpetology 4, 36‑37.

Lilge D, Wicker R. 1972. Bemerkungen zu den Eidechsen der Umgebung von Rovinj (lstrien). Salamandra 8, 128-136.

An unusual house gecko in Hong Kong, Gray’s Chinese Gecko

AJP spotted this gecko in his flat at the northern end of Kowloon last week. Usually known by its common name of Chinese Gecko in Hong Kong publications, I see that IUCN gives the name Gray’s Chinese Gecko, Gekko chinensis after the man who described it in 1842, John Edward Gray (1800-1875) of the British Museum. Although common in Hong Kong, it is described as ‘rarely found inside buildings’.

The photographs show the characteristic absence of a claw on the inner digits.

Comparative anatomy and physiology of excitatory conduction in the heart: Francis Davies and Eric Francis in Sheffield

‘Have you ever tied a Stannius ligature?’, is a conversation stopper. If the answer is ‘yes’ then you know the person you are talking to studied physiology at some time in the past and that a practical class was concerned with the workings of the frog’s heart—an organ ideal for hamfisted students since it beats spontaneously in isolation and they can learn a great deal about how hearts work in a couple of hours*. However, amphibian and reptilian hearts differ in a number of respects from those of birds and mammals.

One of the key players in the comparative anatomy and physiology of the heart is not remembered by the herpetologists, for example, although his great friend and collaborator is. Francis Davies (1897-1965) was at first sight a classical human anatomist—indeed he became co-editor of Gray’s Anatomy. He was born at Merthyr Tydfil, studied medicine in Cardiff and then University College London. In 1924 he became Senior Demonstrator in anatomy at UCl; he then moved to King’s College London as Reader. In 1935 he arrived in Sheffield as Professor; there he stayed until retirement in 1962. In Sheffield Davies worked on the heart with his friend, Eric Thomas Brazil Francis (1900-1993) who became Reader in Zoology until he retired in 1965.

Together, Davies and Francis studied the hearts of amphibians and reptiles in order to determine how the signal from the pacemaker that sets the heart rate passes first to the atria and then to the ventricle (single in amphibians and most reptiles) or ventricles (in crocodiles as in birds and mammals). Earlier in the 20th century Sir Thomas Lewis (1881-1945) had worked out what happened in mammals: specialised heart muscle cells form a dividing bundle of fibres (the Bundle of His) that convey the message to contract to all parts of the ventricles from the atrio-ventricular node. However, there are no special fibres from the pacemaking sino-atrial node to the atrio-ventricular node; impulses pass across the atria from muscle cell to muscle cell like a Mexican wave. It was Lewis’s brilliant work which made not only the physiology textbooks; the research explained a number of conditions that account for heart disease.

Conduction in the mammalian heart
The structures shown in BLACK are not present in
amphibians and reptiles.
from my 1961 edition of the classical physiology textbook
'BDS'

Francis had already published his book, The Anatomy of the Salamander, and their first joint work, published in 1941, was on the heart of that species (Salamandra salamandra). Francis and Davies concluded that in amphibians and reptiles there is no special conducting system in the heart responsible for spreading the process of excitation to the ventricles; the waves of excitation pass directly but relatively slowly from heart muscle cell to heart muscle cell. In other words, the Mexican wave of contraction continues across the whole heart in contrast to birds and mammals where a specialised bundle of fibres takes over.

Davies and Francis proposed that the reason for this major difference in the heart between ectothermic amphibians and reptiles, on the one hand, and endothermic birds and mammals on the other, is the the pace of life; heart rates are lower in the former than in the latter. Relying on a Mexican wave is just too slow for high heart rates to be achieved. They also suggested that the development of a special conducting system was a relatively recent evolutionary change. Their views still hold good.

But what about crocodilians with their two ventricles? Do they have a system like that in birds and mammals, or one characteristic of extant reptiles? Davies and Francis had that covered. They showed that crocodilians have no specialised conducting pathways.

Francis Davies and Eric Francis were not exemplars of the dyed-in-the-wool anatomists who never lifted their eyes from the dissecting table; nor did they confine their studies to comparative anatomy. Both stressed form and function. Davies while undoubtedly seen as a human anatomist of the old school, stressed in teaching anatomy to medical students ‘living’ functional anatomy. Francis was a zoological polymath. In their work on the vertebrate heart, they threw every technique then available at the problem of how excitation by the pacemaker is conducted to all parts: gross observation, dissection, serial sections for histology, histochemistry, slow-motion cinephotography, in-vitro physiology and electrocardiography.

Francis Davies had been unwell for some years when when he retired in 1962. He died in 1965. Eric Francis wrote his obituary for the Journal of Anatomy.

ETB Francis's drawing of the Salamander heart from the 1941 paper

*By tying two ligatures Hermann Friedrich Stannius (1808-1883) showed that the pacemaker of the frog’s heartbeat is in the sinus venosus and that impulses pass from there to the atria and then the ventricle. By isolating regions of the heart these two ligatures also showed that the chambers beat to their own rhythm spontaneously in the absence of input from the pacemaker. The first Stannius ligature is tied between the sinus venosus and the right atrium; the second between the atria and the ventricles. As a hoax the late Jim Linzell and I, in response to a letter asking for exhibits for a museum, put a length of cotton thread in an envelope and sent it along with the explanation that this was Stannius’s third ligature which he never got round to using because his wife had sent a message telling him to get home before his dinner got cold. It was dated 1 April. We never had a reply.

Davies F, Francis ETB. 1941. The heart of the salamander (Salamandra salamandra L.), with special reference to the conducting (connecting) system and its bearing on the phylogeny of  the conducting systems of mammalian and avian hearts. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 232, 99-130.

Davies F, Francis ETB. 1946. The conducting system of the vertebrate heart. Biological Reviews 21, 173-188

Davies F, Francis ETB, King TS. 1951. Electrocardiogram of the crocodilian heart. Nature 167, 146.

Davies F, Francis ETB, King TS. 1952. The conducting (connecting) system of the crocodilian heart. Journal of Anatomy 86, 152-161.

Francis, ETB. 1965. In memoriam: Francis Davies. Journal of Anatomy 99, 913-915.

Jensen B, Boukens BJD, Postma AV, Gunst QD, van den Hoff MJB, Moorman AFM, Wang T, Christoffels VM. 2012. Identifying the evolutionary building blocks of the cardiac conduction system. PLoS ONE 7(9): e44231. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0044231 

A New Matamata Species. Now there are two

The bizarre Matamata from South America was always thought of as one species, Chelus fimbriata. It did though seem odd that the one species is present in both the Amazon and in the separate river drainages in northern South America. In the 1990s some morphological differences were found in specimens from these distinct geographical regions. Now it has been established using both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA that the two populations separated about 12.7 million years ago, the time the Orinoco Basin in the north was formed. Matamatas living in the Orinoco and Rio Negro Basins and in the Essequibo drainage are morphologically and genetically distinct from those in the Amazon Basin and the Mahury drainage. The authors of the new paper have, therefore, split the old species into two: Chelus orinocensis from the former with C. fimbriata retained for the latter.

I have only seen one Matamata, other than those in zoos, and that was in the semi-wild state. During our trip to Guyana in 2006 we stayed for a couple of days at Rock View, a lodge in Annai on the Rupununi River, a tributary of the Essequibo. There in a large concrete tank lived a large Matamata which had been collected locally. The woman who looked after it climbed into the tank and lifted it out so that we could see and photograph it. This magnificent chelonian, which feeds  by sucking its prey into its mouth by a rapid expansion of the pharynx, was obviously of the newly described species, Chelus orinocensis.

Showing the location of Annai in Guyana. The Essequibo River reached the Atlantic to the north

  

Vargas-Ramírez M, Caballero S, Morales-Betancourt MA, Lasso CA, Amaya L, Martínez JG, Viana MS, Vogt RC, Farias IP, Hrbek T, Campbell PD, Fritz U. 2020. Genomic analyses reveal two species of the matamata (Testudines: Chelidae: Chelus spp.) and clarify their phylogeography, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution148, doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2020.106823.

Sánchez-Villagra MR, Pritchard PCH, Paolillo A, Linares OJ. 1995. Geographic Variation in the Matamata Turtle, Chelus fimbriatus, with Observations on its Shell Morphology and Morphometry. Chelonian Conservation and Biology 1, 294-300.

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Peter Dunn

I started to write this article a couple of days ago. That evening I found from Tim Melling a tribute on Flickr to Peter Dunn, the co-leader of that Naturetrek trip to Guyana, who had died earlier that day. Peter, a retired policeman from Scarborough, was well-known to birders in Yorkshire was well as to Naturetrek clients both as a leader and as compiler of those essential checklists. Our abiding memory is of Peter walking along a baking hot track wearing the Wellington Boots he had, after experience leading trips in Belize, wisely brought with him. With Flowers of Sulphur applied liberally to his thick socks he avoided the dreaded chiggers; the rest of the party did not.

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Fluorescent chameleons, salamanders, newts and frogs...and a budgerigar

An increasing number of animals are being found to fluoresce.  Fluorescence happens when a chemical fluorophore absorbs of shorter-wavelength light and them emits some of the absorbed energy as light at a longer-wavelength. In some biological examples, blue light is absorbed and green light is emitted

Why animals fluoresce is the subject of active research. Does the change to a more noticeable colour mean that fluorescence is sometimes involved in signalling to other animals of the same sex, or of  different sex, or of the same species, or to a predator, or to prey? Is it assisting in camouflage, the fluorescent emission matching, say, the emission from plants in the background?

Perception of fluorescence depends on the properties of the photoreceptors of the animal exposed to the fluorescence, so that in the case of proposed signalling between animals of the same species, it would be a requirement to demonstrate that the visual pigments of the eyes of that species can actually pick up the colour.

There is, of course, the possibility that there is no function of the fluorescence at all, that it is just a by-product of a particular molecule used as a pigment or for some other purpose in the skin or other tissue. This is the same argument as to why some creatures from the depths of the sea have bright colours; the production of brightly coloured molecules used by the animal are simply not selected against since there is no predator present that can see them.

A very well argued paper appeared in 2017 in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society by Justin Marshall (University of Queensland) and Sonke Johnsen (Duke University, North Carolina). The authors explained the background to explaining any function of fluorescence in terms of communication between individuals. They set out criteria that must be satisfied in order for such a role for fluorescence to be accepted. The Budgerigar, Melopsittacus undulatus, they found from descriptive and experimental studies, fulfilled all the criteria. In short, both males and females prefer to associate with potential mates that fluoresce.

Fluorescence characteristics of the budgerigar
(a,b) White light and UV fluorescent excitation
photographs of front and back of head showing
fluorescent cheek and crown feathers
from Marshall & Johnsen 2017

More recent studies have shown fluorescence from the bony tubercles of the skull of many species of chameleon—just one more feature added to the list of properties of those extraordinary animals. The phenomenon is particular evident in those chameleons living in humid forests ‘known to have a higher relative component of UV light’. The blue light emitted would be in sharp contrast to the brown and green colours reflected by the surroundings.

from Prötzel et al 2018

  

Even more recently came photographs showing fluorescence in a number of amphibians, this time a green emission from blue light (with some species showing emission in response to UV (ultraviolet)).

from Lamb & Davis 2020

The accumulating evidence for fluorescence in a wide range of animals (and plants) raises so many questions as to the molecular mechanisms involved and possible functions, that the only conclusion at present is the inevitable: more research is required.

In the meantime enjoy the pictures.

Lamb JY, Davis MP. 2020. Salamanders and other amphibians are aglow with biofluorescence. Scientific Reports 10, 2821. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-59528-9 

Marshall J, Johnsen S. 2017 Fluorescence as a means of colour signal enhancement. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 372: 20160335. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2016.0335 

Prötzel D, Heß M, Scherz MD, Schwager M, van’t Padje A, Glaw F. 2018. Widespread bone-based fluorescence in chameleons. Scientific Reports 8, 698. DOI:10.1038/s41598-017-19070-7 

Peter Charles Howard Pritchard 1943-2020. An encyclopaedic knowledge of chelonians and their conservation. How did he start out?

The study and conservation of chelonians—turtles, terrapins and tortoises—has lost a major champion with the death on 25 February of Peter Pritchard at the age of 76. He and his Chelonian Research Institute were better known in the U.S.A. and the lands where chelonians breed than in his native United Kingdom. An appreciation of his work, influence and importance can be read on the website of Turtle Conservancy.

From Turtle Conservancy's website

   

I never met Peter Pritchard and often wondered how he had become interested in reptiles. Then I read an appreciation (on what is now a dead link) he had written of Angus d’Albini Bellairs (1918-1990):

Angus was the first herpetologist I ever met. He was the immediate successor to my father as Reader in Anatomy at St. Mary’s Hospital, my father (Dr. J. J. Pritchard*) having been appointed Professor of Anatomy at Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland the preceding year, and this connection gave me free access to a man I regarded as an intellectual hero.  My (signed) copy of his 1957 book, simply named Reptiles, is dated April 5 1958, when I was just 14 years old, and just a few years later I started to write a book of my own, which I ambitiously entitled Living Turtles of the World.  Despite the clearly schoolboyish flavor of this early draft, not to mention the lack of personal field experience and shortage of library access, Angus introduced me to the concept of peer review (although we were not exactly peers), and he read the whole thing, making gentle suggestions in pencil wherever he saw fit. 

Whenever I was in London, I would find my way to the dusty chambers of St. Mary’s (made famous by Sir Alexander Fleming), and knock on Angus’ door for a conversation on the subject of mutual interest, namely herpetology.  At such times, he would always open a bottle of sherry and bring some small-size laboratory beakers from which we would drink it, as he urged me to pursue an experimental approach to herpetology, by means such as studying underwater respiration in softshell turtles, or scute regeneration in chelonians.  (Somehow, I never became “experimental”, instead concentrating on natural history, taxonomy, skeletal anatomy, and conservation aspects).

Angus also introduced me to other herpetologists, including Miss Grandison, the Keeper of Zoology at the British Museum, a lady who had seemed rather remote and doctrinaire when I wrote to her, but was more like a favorite auntie once encountered in person.  I was also privileged, through her, to meet J. C. Battersby, on his very last day before retiring in 1961; he had been a “boy attendant” of G. A. Boulenger, no less, appointed in 1916.

Angus introduced me to the bizarre militaristic hierarchies at the London Zoo (Regents’ Park), where the “gentlemen officers” (the Curators etc) lorded it over the non-commissioned ranks (head keepers and below), only the former being admitted to such places as the Fellows’ Restaurant.  He himself was, of course, “top of the heap,” a scholar and a gentleman, although unpaid in status as “honorary herpetologist,” and I think his extensive wartime military experience was what prompted him to refer to the Reptile House staff as his “sergeant major,” his “corporal,” etc… 

And that’s how it all began, although his interest in animals was first piqued by being taken as a small boy to London Zoo. Even though his first degree was in chemistry at Oxford, he moved to Florida to work for his Ph.D. with Archie Carr (1909-1987), the doyen of research and conservation of turtles.

The book Pritchard referred to was his Living Turtles of the World, published in 1967—when he was 24—by the infamous Herbert R. Axelrod’s TFH Publications. A completely rewritten survey of the world’s chelonians stretching to nearly 900 pages, also published by TFH, appeared as Encyclopedia of Turtles in 1979. Axelrod himself took a number of the photographs. I have a copy—still a useful reference—on my shelves.

The following video on, and including Peter Pritchard, appeared in 2016.

*Peter Pritchard’s father. John Joseph (Jack) Pritchard. was born in 1916 in Adelaide, South Australia. By the age of 19 he had a first degree and arrived in Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship to work at Oxford in the Department of Physiology. After becoming medically qualified in London he moved into anatomy, first at UCL, then St. Mary’s before moving to Belfast as Professor. His research was on bone growth and repair, a subject the reader will notice of considerable interest and importance in the life of chelonians. He died in 1979, aged 63.