470 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914. 
THE REPTILES. 
The park does not as yet possess a perfectly appointed reptile 
house, consequently the few reptiles in the collection are exhibited 
in a somewhat unsatisfactory way in the lion house. There are to 
be seen a number of boa constrictors, an anaconda, several large 
rattlesnakes, a copperhead, a water moccasin, a number of harmless 
snakes, the celebrated Gila monster (a species of lizard), some iguanas, 
and last, but not by any means least, four giant tortoises from the 
Galapagos Islands. 
These tortoises are very interesting to naturalists, as they are the 
surviving representatives of gigantic reptiles that were formerly 
widely distributed over the surface of the earth, but are now. nearly 
extinct. They exist only in scattered islands in the Indian Ocean 
and in the small voleanic group of the Galapagos, 500 miles west of 
South America, directly under the equator. They were formerly 
extremely abundant there, so much so that the Spaniards named the 
islands from them, the word ‘‘galapago”’ meaning, in Spanish, a land 
or fresh-water tortoise. Their abundance led, however, to their 
destruction, as they were found to be excellent food and easily caught, 
so that ships would stop at the islands and take on hundreds of them 
as a welcome supply of fresh meat. They are vegetable feeders, in 
captivity eating lettuce, cabbage, and other vegetables; when at 
home their principal food is a species of cactus and some acid berries. 
They are believed to be very long lived, specimens of the East Indian 
variety being known to be at least 200 years old. As they grow very 
slowly, it is probable that the specimens in the park are already of 
ereat age, though they are of moderate weight and size for these 
animals, the largest weighing only 170 pounds and measuring slightly 
less than 3 feet long, while specimens have been collected weighing 
400 pounds and measuring 4 feet, and fossil specimens are known at 
least 6 feet in length. They are quite strong and easily walk off 
with a small boy or even a man upon their backs, as may be seen in 
plate 29. 
Mr. Walter Rothschild sent an expedition to the islands in 1897, 
and it is from him that these specimens were obtained. They 
represent two different species, inhabiting two different islands, for, 
strangely enough, those in each separate island have peculiarities 
slightly different from the others. The following account of these 
interesting creatures is from the Journal of a Cruise to the Pacific 
Ocean (1812-1814), by Capt. David Porter, United States Navy: 
They [the ships] had been in at James Island and had supplied themselves abun- 
dantly with those extraordinary animals, the tortoises of the Galapagos, which prop- 
erly deserve the name of the elephant tortoise. Many of them were of a size to 
weigh upward of three hundredweight, and nothing, perhaps, can be more disagree- 
