424 NOVITATBS ZOOLOGICAE XXII. 1915- 



no actual proof of there having been a tortoise indigenous to the Seychelles, 

 and that all the people best acquainted with the islands declared that all the 

 semi-domestic tortoises then there had come from Aldabra. The foregoing extracts, 

 due to the careful investigations of Messrs. Sauzier, Fauvel, and Professor Vaillaut 

 in the " Graudes Archives " of the Admiralty in Paris and other French repositories 

 of manuscripts, however, show that not only were there several indigenous species 

 on the Seychelles down at least to 1826, but that most likely several of the 

 semi-domestic tortoises there and ou Mauritius and Reunion had originated in 

 the Seychelles. The following extract really belongs among the previous ones, 

 but is given here as it was discovered later. 



In the Journal of the Ship Le Charles, on her voyage leaving Mauritius in 

 1742 and returning there in 1T43, Captain Jean Grossin writes that after charting 

 the islands of Cargados (Cardonat) and Agalela or Galega, he dropped anchor at 

 "Jean de Nove" or Parquhar Island on October 29, 1742. On the 30th he 

 disembarked and found numbers of Land Tortoises, the smallest of which were 

 larger than the largest of Rodriguez Island ; some being such that six men could 

 not carry them, nor could they be got into the boats. They were rounder than 

 those of Rodriguez, and produced a cry like a calf. They were also more tender 

 and better flavoured than those of Rodriguez. 



As regards those of Aldabra itself, the brothers Rodatz state that they found 

 the tortoises still numerous during their visit in the first half of the nineteenth 

 century, but they kept mostly to the thick scrub. There were ou the islands, at 

 the time of their visit, several brick-walled enclosures in which the tortoises were 

 collected for export to Mauritius, Madagascar, and elsewhere. In one they saw 

 200 and in another 300 tortoises. 



Kersten mentions that a Hamburg merchant informed him that as late as 

 1847 a hundred men — the crew of two ships — collected and carried off 1200 

 tortoises from Aldabra, and among these were still numbers of veritable giants, 

 of a weight from 800 to 900 lb. each. A great and probably permanent hindrance 

 to any really exhaustive and critical elucidation of the races of this group is that 

 for about 150 years large numbers of these tortoises have been kept in a semi- 

 domesticated condition on Mauritius, Reunion, and the Seychelles. As they have 

 been brought there from many different islands, and in the case of the Seychelles 

 down at least to 1820, tliere survived ■original native tortoises: these creatures 

 have interbred freely, and many of the surviving individuals are undoubtedly 

 h3-brids and mongrels between many races. 



"With the exception of the seven or eight brought by Dr. Voeltzkow from South 

 Aldabra, of which two are at Tring and four in Frankfurt, no tortoise of this group 

 in any Musenm can with certainty be proved to have been caught wild, all or 

 nearly all having been shipped to Europe from the Seychelles and Mauritius. 

 Therefore, as — with the exception of the negligible quantity still living in South 

 Aldabra of T. daudinii — the tortoises have been exterminated on all the islands 

 where they occurred in a wild state, a Monograph similar to the one pnblished by 

 Dr. John van Denburgh on the Gala[)agos Tortoises has become an impossibility. 



Systematic Account. 



Ten names have been given to tortoises belonging to the Seychelles and 

 Aldabra-Madagascar Group ; but the reason so little was done in the study and 

 classification of Giant Tortoises till it was almost too late was owing to their all 



