NOVITATES ZOOLOBICAE XXII. 1915. 405 



tortoise, which I have provisioually identified as of this race, was taken to the 

 Sandwich Ishinds by Captain Meek of the Boston Eagle about 1812. 



Dr. Van Denbnrgh has identified this race with Testudo elephantopus of 

 Harlan (for reasons of. Free. Cal. Acad. &■/., ser. 4, vol. ii., pt. i., p. 247 [1014]); 

 his reasons, however, do not quite convince me, aud I prefer, as the type of Harlan's 

 elephantopus no longer exists, to call this form Testudo galapagoetisis Baur, which 

 is a name certainly given to the Charles Island race, and place elephantopus under 

 it with a ?. Both the late Dr. Giinther and I were agreed that the type of Testudo 

 nigra Qnoy & Gaimard was much too young to be certain as to which species it 

 belonged to, and Dr. Van Denbnrgh, agreeing with our decision, quotes it here with 

 a ?. Now, however, slightly more light is thrown on the question by my large 

 living (?. This was brought, as stated above, to the Sandwich Islands by Captain 

 Meek in 1812, and Messrs. Quoy & Gaimard state that the type of their 

 Testudo nigra was presented to M. de Freyciuet by Captain Meek while the Uranie 

 and Pkysicien were in the Sandwich Islands. Now one is at once tempted to say 

 that " if they both came from Captain Meek, they must have come from one place, 

 and as the large living one is a Charles Island Tortoise, the type of nigra is one 

 too." But unfortunately there were until May 1915 five Galapagos tortoises on 

 the Sandwich Islands, all said to have been brought there by Captain Meek. In 

 May 1915, through the good offices of Mr. Thomas Gerrard, the large c? above cited 

 was presented to the Triug Museum by the ex-Queen of the Sandwich Islands, and 

 one of the ? ? by Messrs. G. N. & A. S. Wilcox. Now this ? is certainly not 

 a saddle-backed tortoise, and can only have come from Indefatigable Island, or 

 Central or South Albemarle. It is certainly not quite so strongly dome-shelled as 

 two of my three adult ? ¥ of the Indefatigable race, but it agrees fairly well with 

 the third ; so for the present, as it is not possible to take correct measurements of 

 living tortoises, I think it safest to treat it as an example of Testudo nigritn. 

 Thus, if Captain Meek really brought all five of these tortoises to the Hawaiian 

 Islands, they represent at least two if not three races ; and so we get no further 

 in our search for indirect evidence as to the identity of Testudo nigra. 



Testudo darwini Van Denb. 



Testudo darw'ud Van Denburgh, Proo. Cul. Acad, Set. (4) i. p. 4 (1907) (James Island). 



The large c? was one of a number of tortoises turned down on " Rotnmah " 

 or Madison Island, Marquesas Islands, by Captain David Porter in 1813, when 

 he went there from the Galapagos Islands in the U.S.A. frigate Essex. It 

 remained there till the second half of the nineteenth century, when it was brought 

 to Tonga. It was presented by King George of Tonga to Mr. Alexander Macdonakl, 

 who brought it to Sydney in 1860, and deposited it in the Hospital grounds at 

 Gladesville, where it lived till 1896, when it was procured for the Tring Museum by 

 Mr. Ogilvie of the Alliance Marine Insurance Company, and brought to London. 

 It died in Regent's Park in July 1898, and has been mounted, the skin and scutes 

 on a cast carapace, and the bones aud bony carapace as a complete skeleton. 

 Mr. Waite {liec. Austr. Mas. iii. p. 97), who calls it T. nigrita, states that it was 

 brought, according to Captain Howard of the schooner Ida, to Rotumah by an 

 "American whaler" from the Galapagos, but this is evidently an error for 

 "American frigate." The skull is enormously thick and heavy, and almost all 

 sutures are completely ancylosed. It measures 8'u inches from the front edge above 

 nasal opening to the end of the occipital spine, aud weighs 13 ounces ; while the 



