Me PRELIMINARY NOTE ON Aq Ne Ww “LO R- 
LOLS E FROM “S'OU;PECyLN ita 
By J. R. HENDERSON, M.B., F.L.S., Superintendent, Madras 
Government Museum. 
The tortoise which forms the subject of this note was obtained 
in Cochin State, on the Malabar coast, in October 1911, while I 
was engaged on a collecting tour in the dense State Forests, at a 
distance of about twenty miles from Chalakudi, the starting point 
of the forest tramway service. The Kadars, a jungle tribe who 
brought the first specimen to me, stated that it lived in the forest, 
inhabiting a short underground burrow and that it did not affect 
the neighbourhood of water, a fact borne out by the absence of 
webbed digits. In addition to this specimen, a male apparently 
mature, which is described below, I subsequently obtained through 
the kindness of Mr. G. R. Grubb, M.A., M.I.C.E., Chalakudi, a 
second young example, but a Museum collector dispatched to the 
forests in March last was unable to find any others, so the species 
does not appear to be common. Testudo travancorica, Boulenger, 
is common in the same neighbourhood and I obtained a number 
of specimens. Both examples of the new species have been kept 
alive for over six months, during which time they have lived 
entirely on vegetable food. They have not shown any special 
partiality for water and when handled they do not emit an 
offensive odour as in the case of G. trijuga. 
I have followed Stejneger and Siebenrock in substituting the 
earlier name Geoemyda for Nicoria, the latter being adopted by 
Boulenger in the volume on Reptilia in the Fauna of India series. 
As pointed out by Stejneger (Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, XV, 
p. 237, 1902) the type of Geoemyda (Gray, 1834) is G. spenglert, 
and the same species was subsequently taken by Gray as the type 
of his genus Nicoria (1855). 
GEOEMYDA SILVATICA, N. sp. 
Carapace moderately depressed, tricarinate, with the median 
keel much more prominent than the lateral ones; the greatest 
height at the level of the posterior margin of the first vertebral 
shield. Vertebral shields broader than long, except the last in 
which the length and breadth are almost equal; vertebrals, 
particularly the first, wider than the costals. Nuchal longer than 
broad. Plastron of moderate width. Abdominal shields larger than 
the pectorals. The longest median suture is that between the 
