3^2 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES [Proc. 4th See. 



living tortoises about two miles from the top of the crater. 

 In this place it almost seems as though one were seeing them 

 in a park, for they are met simply lying around on the grass — 

 some feeding and others sleeping. They follow the trails 

 made by the cattle and pack mules, and we often had to turn 

 off the trail to pass by them. They are by no means rare 

 around this mountain, although great inroads have been made 

 upon them by the oil-hunters. Those we saw on the way up 

 the mountain were moderate-sized females. The males, being 

 the larger, were killed off first for their oil, and consequently 

 are rare. 



We reached the top about noon and set our course toward a 

 large valley to the southwest of the mountain, where the 

 natives killed the large tortoises for their oil. We continued 

 to travel through fine pasture land free from fog and damp- 

 ness, for on the top of the mountain the weather is perfect. 

 On all sides of us were tortoise skeletons — hundreds of them! 

 With few exceptions, they all had been killed by the natives. 

 The wild dogs have a few to their credit. These may be dis- 

 tinguished by the carapace and plastron being intact. The 

 natives cut theirs open with axes. We saw no living tortoises 

 on this steep slope of the crater, nor did we encounter any 

 until we reached the level valley below. Fog hung over this 

 valley early in the morning, and lifted a little toward noon. 

 The vegetation here was the same as on the mountain — fine 

 green grass and small trees. We made our camp in an old 

 house the oil-hunters had left, and started on our search .for 

 tortoises. We soon found two near the house, but they were 

 only moderate-sized ones. One of these we killed in order to 

 get the liver for lunch, and, while we were eating, our native 

 guide slipped out and cut off one of its legs for his own lunch. 

 This spoilt it for a skin, so we saved only the skull. We 

 skinned the other one in the afternoon. On our return to 

 camp we found that the dogs had eaten what was left of our 

 first tortoise. They ate even the shell, which, by morning, 

 was half gone. 



Next morning we started with two mules and our guide to 

 follow the trail where the big tortoises used to be abundant, 

 but found that they had been slaughtered by wholesale, so 

 that we found no large ones. We saw only the ordinary 

 females, which were common. We skinned four of them. 



