TORTOISES OF THE GALAPAGOS 



bouring continent of Africa range the elephant and the 

 rhinoceros. The Indian elephant and the Indian 

 species of rhinoceros do not flourish in the smaller 

 islands of the Eastern Archipelago. With the tor- 

 toises it is otherwise. The Mascarene islands and the 

 Galapagos Archipelago are the spots haunted by the 

 biggest existing tortoises, of which the species 

 T. daudini, from the south island of Aldabra, has fur- 

 nished us with the largest living tortoise ; that speci- 

 men was until recently alive at the Zoo. The puzzle 

 as to how they got upon these islands is like that of the 

 flies in amber or the apples in the dumpling. We can 

 only infer, and inference has been of two kinds. It 

 has been held that the Mascarene islands and the 

 Galapagos are the last vestiges of submerged conti- 

 nents, from which other inhabitants have dwindled 

 away in correspondence with the shrinking of terra 

 firma ; only the tortoises remained, and finding the 

 locality congenial and competition scarce, they waxed 

 fat and grew in bulk. Viewed in this way the presence 

 of these giants is a clue to formerly existing continents. 

 On the other hand, it is not so certain that they may 

 not have reached the islands, when they were islands, 

 by sea transit. Heavy though the colossal tortoises 

 of the Galapagos are, they will breast the waves of the 

 pond in their enclosure with some success, and float 

 in quite a feathery fashion upon its bosom. If one 

 tortoise, heavy with eggs, were safely piloted across 

 the waves, a colony would be formed, and this event 

 repeated once a century would account for all the facts. 

 The success when once arrived at is not difficult of 

 understanding ; it is the mode of arrival which puzzles 

 us. The great Testudo daudini, once at the Zoo, and 

 to which reference has been made, measured fifty-five 

 inches along the shell. To this has to be added some- 

 thing for length of neck, and some of these big tor- 



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