Patricia Dewey, age 10, of Visalia, Calif., for her questions:

is a turtle a mammal?

There is a lot of confusion about which animals are mammals, so let's get the matter straight once and for all. All the mammals are warm¬blooded, air breathing creatures. All of them have backbones and internal skeletons. Almost all of them have coats of hair or fur and those that do not, have a few bristles to show that their ancestors had furry coats. All but a few of the very simple mammals give birth to live babies. Most important, every mammal baby is fed on its mother's milk.

So you see, the turtle cannot pass the mammal test by a long shot. To be sure, he breathes air and he has an internal skeleton. But he is a cold blooded animal and he wears an armor plated coat. What's more, he started out life as a round, soft shelled egg. When he hatched, he set out right away to find his own food. Chances are, he never knew his mother, for she usually lays her eggs in the ground and goes away.

Turtles are classed as reptiles; which makes them distantly related to the snakes and the lizards. These distant relatives also hatch from roun.d~ soft shelled eggs. When you watch a turtle, you may think he is a lazy old slow poke. Certainly he seems in no hurry to get anywhere. Nhen threatened, he pulls in his head and his feet and his armor coat protects him from most of his enemies.

This lazy way of living may not seem very exciting. But it is safe and successful. Turtles are thought to live longer than any animals in the world. Our little box turtle may live a hundred years and some of the big turtles of the Galapagos Islands have lived much longer. What's more, the entire turtle family has lived a long, long time.

There were turtles on earth 1?5 million years ago.

Some of these ancient turtles were much bigger than any of our modern turtles, but they were not much different in appearance. Some of these old granddaddys were twelve feet long and weighed perhaps a ton. There were turtles living successfully on land and sea before the giant dinosaurs came to live on the earth.

There were turtles all through the long reign of the dinosaurs. When the giant reptilas perished, the turtles were still there. The ancestors of our modern turtles saw the first birds take to the air and the first snakes appear. Finally, when the turtle family was about one hundred million years old, they saw still another new animal come to live on the earth. This new animal was a mammal and its children were to become the cats, dogs, pigs, seals and all the other mammals that make our world so charming.