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XVI. On two new Genera of Land Tortoises. By Thomas Bell, 
Esq., F.L.S. Communicated by the Zoological Club of the 
Linnean Society. 
Read. March 6, 1827. 
Ix a monograph of the * Freshwater Tortoises having a move- 
able Sternum," published in the first volume of the Zoological 
Journal, Y took occasion to remark, that it is in the genus Terra- 
pene, and especially in those species which had been confounded 
by authors under the trivial name c/ausa, that we must look for 
the intermediate affinities by which the Freshwater Tortoises are 
connected with those which inhabit the land. These relations, 
however, are such as to constitute them a group of the family 
Emydidæ or true Freshwater Tortoises, notwithstanding their 
habits and structure approach in a certain degree to those of 
the Testudinide or Land Tortoises : and I sought in vain amongst 
the known species of the latter family for the slightest approach 
to such a similarity of structure as should point out a relation to 
the former. : 
About two years since, however, I obtained a living specimen 
of a new species of Tortoise (Kinixys castanea of the present 
communication), which appeared to possess in several particu- 
lars the relations of which I was in search. In the depressed 
form and remarkable lateral expansion of the shell, it exhibits 
an evident approach to the form of the shell in the genus Emys, 
whilst the size of the openings for the passage of the feet indi- 
cate an extraordinary facility and extent of motion. I find con- 
sequently, 
