216 Zoological Society : — 



Dr. Cantor sent the specimen here referred to, to the East India 

 Company, and it has passed from them into the Collection of the 

 British Museum, so that there can be no doubt about the identity 

 of the two animals. 



Mr. Le Conte, in the ' Proceedings of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences of Philadelphia ' for October 1859, vol. vii. p. 187, describes 

 a Tortoise from Java under the name of Teleopus luxatus, which 

 evidently belongs to the same genus, and is probably the same spe- 

 cies which I had previously described and figured under the name 

 of Manouria fusca. 



When I first described the genus from a shell in a very imperfect 

 condition, I referred it to the family Emydidce, on account of its 

 " depressed form and the divided caudal plate." 



Dr. (Jantor, in the Catalogue above quoted, not only refers it to 

 that family, but considers it a species of the genus Geoemyda, and 

 describes the animal as having the feet of that genus, which are 

 provided with strong, separate toes. 



Mr. Le Conte seems to have had a perfect animal, for he de- 

 scribes the feet thus: — "Toes and claws 5*5; fore-claw long and 

 rather sharp : hind-feet clavate ; claws nearly globular, the inner 

 one wide and flat, the edge sharp- edged : " yet he places the genus 

 Teleopus, in his arrangement published in the same volume of the 

 ' Philadelphia Proceedings,' between Platysternon and Lutremys with 

 the true JEmydes, observing that " it possesses a strong mixture of 

 the characters of this family with those of the next." 



The British Museum has just acquired from Mr. Gould a very 

 fine and perfect specimen of the genus, which he received with a 

 series of skins of Kangaroos and other Australian mammalia and 

 reptiles from Australia, thus enabling me to lay before the Society a 

 completion of the character of the genus before established from the 

 examination of an imperfect specimen of the shell alone, to correct 

 the position of the genus in the order, and to show the geographical 

 distribution of the single species on which it is founded. 



The genus Manouria is a typical Land Tortoise (Testudinidce), 

 which verifies the fact stated by Dr. Cantor, that it is " found on 

 the great hill at Pinang at a distance from water." Like the other 

 genera of that family, it has very short toes on both the hind and 

 fore feet, which are all united together into a club-like foot, with only 

 the claws separate, — very unlike the distinct, more or less webbed 

 toes of the Freshwater Tortoises or Emydidce, with which it has been 

 hitherto united. Its fore-feet are covered with very large, thick, 

 triangular scales, like the feet of the genus Kinixys ; and it has the 

 spur-like conical scale, situated between the hinder thigh and the 

 base of the tail, which is found in several genera of this family. 



It is easily known from all the other genera of the Emydidce, and 

 from the more terrestrial genera of the family, by the small size and 

 position of the pectoral plates and the divided caudal plate. 



The pectoral plates in some genera of the Freshwater Tortoises, as 

 in Kinosternon and Sternothei'us, are smaller than the other plates, 

 and narrowed on the inner edge ; but I do not know of any genus 



