394 Mr. BELL on two new Genera of Land Tortoises. 
Some time after I had received the living specimen of which 
I have spoken, my friend Mr. J. E. Gray showed me two spe- 
cimens of another species, very closely allied to the former, and 
having exactly the same peculiarity of structure. "These were 
presented by Sir Everard Home to the British Museum, and 
have received from Mr. Gray the specific name of Homeana. I 
have now in my collection a third specimen of the latter species. 
To the genus thus constituted, I have applied the name K1- 
NIXYS, from xzwéw moveo, and i£vs lumbus. d 
The other genus, which it is the object of this paper to de- 
scribe, possesses also one peculiarity which is interesting in a 
similar point of view, as exhibiting a further affinity, or possibly 
only an analogical relation, to the Box Tortoises, although itself 
strictly belonging to the terrestrial family. From a careful ex- 
amination of the Tortoises with a moveable sternum, and a com- 
parison of them with every other group, I was convinced that 
wherever either of the transverse sutures of the bones composing 
the sternum is exactly adapted to the transverse division of the 
sternal scuta, there is no bony union of the two portions, and 
the moveable sternum consequently exists; and that such a 
structure could be thus ascertained, even in dried specimens, 
where the parts had become completely fixed. 
This opinion I was led for a time to consider erroneous, in 
consequence of examining the shell of a new species of Tortoise, 
evidently of the terrestrial form, and belonging therefore to the 
Testudinide. This specimen had lost the anterior lobe of the 
sternum ; and from the appearance of the fracture, it was obvi- 
ous that the suture of the bone and the junction of the humeral 
and pectoral plates had existed exactly at the same line: and as 
no such structure as that of a moveable portion of the sternum 
had ever been found to belong to any Tortoise of a similar ge- 
neral conformation, I believed that this fact was probably fatal 
to 
