334 MOSTLY MAMMALS 



disappeared at an early date. All the other tortoise-islands 

 in the Indian Ocean were inhabited. They include the 

 Aldabra group, north-west of Madagascar, where the few 

 tortoises now remaining in the south island are under 

 Government protection, the Mascarenhas, or Mascarene 

 group (Reunion, or Bourbon, Mauritius, and Rodriguez), 

 the Amirantes, and the Seychelles. None of the Mascarene 

 species survive in their proper home, and all were thought 

 to be extinct, although a specimen has turned up from 

 a distant island, to which it had been carried. Much the 

 same may be said with regard to the Seychelle tortoises, 

 which were exterminated long ago in their proper habitat. 

 There seems, however, to be good reason for believing 

 that a few survivors of the species have been preserved in 

 islands to which they had been transported in ships. This 

 transportation of tortoises from one island to another has 

 indeed added considerably to the difficulty of unravelling 

 the complicated history of the group, a specimen of the 

 South Aldabra tortoise having been carried to one of the 

 islands of the Chagos group, to the south of the Maldives, 

 whence it was subsequently transported to Mauritius. 



The accounts left by the early voyagers show that in the 

 Mascarene and other islands of the Indian Ocean, as well 

 as in those of the Galapagos group, the tortoises formerly 

 existed in enormous numbers. As regards the Galapagos 

 islands, it is remarkable that there are no small-sized 

 species; and the same holds good for the islands of the 

 Indian Ocean, with the exception of Madagascar, where 

 there is one comparatively small form {T. radiata). It 

 should be added that, if we except Madagascar (where 

 there is one moderate-sized carnivore), none of the tortoise- 

 islands were ever the home of large and predatory 

 mammals. This naturally suggests the idea that the 



