100 THE WANDERINGS OF ANIMALS [CH. 



only tortoises, family Chelydidae, which flourish 

 also in South America, e.g. Matamata. The other 

 family, Pelomedusidae, is Afro- American ; of these 

 Podocnemis, now in Madagascar and Brazil, occurs 

 in early Tertiary of Egypt and Angola. The Crypto- 

 dira, tortoises which draw in the neck straight, are 

 most developed in North America. The genus Tes- 

 tudo, the most typical land tortoises, ranges over 

 the world, excepting the Australian quarter, and is 

 limited northwards only by the cooler climate. Its 

 earliest occurrence is in the mid-Eocene of Wyoming, 

 since the Oligocene in Europe, still later in India, 

 where in Pliocene times it attained truly gigantic 

 size (T. atlas). Somewhat smaller kinds lived in 

 Miocene Europe and North America, now restricted 

 to some of the islands near Madagascar, and to the 

 Galapagos, i.e. 'Turtle-islands/ Of course this implies 

 former land connexions. And so does Miolania, the 

 most aberrant of all tortoises, known from the 

 Pleistocene of Queensland, Lord Howe's Island and 

 Argentina. Trionychidae, river or 'mud-turtles,' 

 with a much-reduced, leather-covered shell, since the 

 Cretaceous in North America, in early and mid- 

 Tertiary of Europe, now in North America, Southern 

 Asia and the African continent. 



