I 



TURTLES, TERRAPINS, AND TORTOISES 31 



three feet ; it Is often uniform dark brown in colour, 

 sometimes black, with a yellow blotch on each shield. 

 Although in captivity it does well on cabbage and lettuce, 

 this species, a forest dweller, in the wild state is said to 

 live almost exclusively on rotten fruit. 



The Giant Tortoises : — Although at no very remote 

 period in the past, tortoises of gigantic size were distributed 

 over many islands, both in the Old World (Mascarenes, 

 Madagascar, Aldabra, Seychelles) and the New (Galapagos), 

 at the present day they are much restricted in their range, 

 and occur, as indigenous forms, in two groups of islands 

 only, namely, the Galapagos, off the coast of Ecuador, and 

 Aldabra, near Madagascar, where it is believed only a 

 small number of individuals remain. As explained by 

 Giinther, these islands were, until the sixteenth century, 

 uninhabited by man, or, in fact, any large animals, with 

 the result that these tortoises, endowed with a remarkable 

 degree of longevity, living unmolested amongst luxurious 

 vegetation and equable temperature, were to be found in 

 enormous quantities. Leguat, for instance, who visited 

 Rodriguez in 1691, reported that they were to be seen in 

 flocks of two or three thousand. With the advent of man, 

 however, who found them good to eat, they were used for 

 provisioning passing vessels, a few being specially appointed 

 for the purpose, each of these boats carrying some six 

 thousand tortoises on board. The late Prof. Milne 

 Edwards, quoting from ofiicial reports, states that in 

 1 759 -1 760 altogether 30,000 were exported from Rodri- 

 guez to Mauritius within eighteen months. In the 

 Galapagos thus the numbers were already greatly dimin- 

 ished at the time of Darwin's visit in 1835. Zoological 



