304 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



in such situations long after tlieir continental relatives had 

 become extinct. Reasons are, however, given below for doubting 

 this generalisation. It may be added, as not a little remarkable, 

 that all the tortoises on these islands were of the giant type. 



Giant tortoises were known long before the days of 

 Linnaeus, the first specimen to come to the notice of naturalists 

 being apparently the upper half of a shell still preserved in 

 the Paris Museum of Natural History, which was referred to 

 so long ago as 1676 by Perrault, under the name of la tortue 

 des hides, and was believed to come from the Coromandel 

 Coast. Later on the species represented by this historic 

 specimen was named Testudo indica ; whilst still later tortoises 

 from both hemispheres were included under the same name. 

 Eventually, however, it was ascertained that the real home of 

 this earliest named member of the group was Mauritius, 

 where the famous " Mare aux Songes " has yielded numbers 

 of its semi-fossilised remains. 



Testimony as to the numerical abundance of giant tortoises 

 on the Galapagos, Aldabra and Mascarene Islands during the 

 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is afforded by the narra- 

 tives of the navigators of those eras, from which a number 

 of extracts have been given by Dr. Gilnther in the volume 

 forming No. 5 in the list at the end of this article. In 1691, 

 for instance, the French traveller, Francois Leguat, affirmed 

 that in Rodriguez he saw droves of from two to three thousand 

 tortoises, which were packed as close as sheep in a flock, so 

 that it was quite possible to walk thirty yards or so by 

 stepping from shell to shell without even touching the ground. 

 So late as the year 1740 they were abundant in Mauritius, 

 although not forming such closely serried ranks as in Rodriguez. 

 By 1 761, in which year Admiral Kempinfelt visited the last- 

 named island, Mauritius would appear to have been well-nigh 

 drained of its tortoises, for we read that a number of small 

 vessels were employed in conveying these reptiles by thousands 

 at a time to Port Louis, where their flesh was used as food in 

 the hospitals. In addition to depletion by this means, the 

 tortoises of all the islands in the Indian Ocean, as well as 

 those of the Galapagos group, formed a valuable, and for a 

 time inexhaustible, food-supply for vessels sailing in those 

 latitudes. Such a continuous drain could have but one result 

 in the case of the oft-visited islands of the Indian Ocean 



