ANIMALS RECENTLY EXTINCT. 645 



records that they took no notice even of the report of a gun, while Dar- 

 win states that they seemed quite unaware of any approach from the 

 rear, but would draw in their extremities with a haul hiss as soon as they 

 saw him. Dampier, who visited the Galapagos group in 1080, was per- 

 haps the lirst to publish an account of the tortoises that supplied him 

 with fresh provisions, as they did many a mariner after him, these 

 creatures being indeed ideal live stock for sailors' purposes, requiring 

 little care and no food, yet existing on this diet for three or four months. 

 Dampier does not tell us from what islands he obtained his tortoises, but 

 in his time they must have been abundant throughout the entire Archi- 

 pelago. Occasional mention is made of the Galapagos tortoises by ves- 

 sels which stopped there for provisions and water, and many more 

 touched there without putting their visits on record. In 1813 Porter, 

 of the celebrated Essex, who visited the islands for the purpose of way- 

 laying British whaling vessels, obtained tortoises abundantly on Hoods, 

 Marlborough, James. Charles, and Indefatigable Islands, but although 

 only shells and bones were seen on Chatham Island, the tortoises must 

 still have been numerous there, since they still exist in that locality. 

 Porter was the first to note the fact that differences existed between 

 the tortoises from the various islands. In 1835, during the now famous 

 voyage of the Beagle, Darwin found the tortoises still numerous on 

 Chatham, Charles, and James Islands, although he notes that the 

 numbers had been much reduced, owing to quantities taken by the 

 whalers and by parties from the mainland, who visited the islands for 

 the purpose of salting tortoise meat and making oil from the fat. II. 

 M. S. Herald in 1810 reported the tortoises extinct on Charles Island, 

 and in 1875 Captain Cookson says that only a few individuals were left 

 on Chatham Island, and that they were much lessened in numbers on 

 Hood, James, and Indefatigable Islands, although plentiful in Albe- 

 marle and Abingdon. Small wonder that the ranks of these slow-grow- 

 ing, slower-paced reptiles should be getting thinned out, when we read 

 that vessels have taken away as many as seven hundred at one time, 

 and that tiie crew of a frigate captured two hundred in a single day. 

 Of course these figures are exceptional, yet prior to 1870 as many as 

 forty or fifty whalers annually visited the islands, stopping there some 

 time and carrying away a hundred or so of tortoises when they de- 

 parted, the number thus taken from Charles Island alone being esti- 

 mated at 6,000, the total number from all the islands reaching several 

 millions. 



In J 829 the Government of Ecuador established a penal colony on 

 Charles Island, whose members relied principally upon the tortoises to 

 keen them in fresh meat and the orchilla* gatherers, who visit the 



" The Spanish name for the orchilla weed (Iloccella tinctoria), a widely distributed 

 species of lichen, from which a purple dye is obtained. 



The lichen formed a portion of the food of the tortoises, and it. is rather interesting 

 that, having first aided in their increase, it should later on prove an important, factor 

 in their destruction. 



