168 NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



ago, have burst forth in explosions of sufficient violence lo hurl 

 lava for miles. 



The roughness alluded to cannot be due, as has been suggested 

 by some persons, to the tortoises having fallen and rolled over 

 rocks, for were this the case, the tortoises living on Duncan 

 Island, where the ground is much rougher and rocks more plenti- 

 ful, should be scarred worse than any, but no marks upon them 

 indicate any such experiences. While at the ranch, where nearly 

 50 men were at work, we were amazed at the reckless and heart- 

 less manner in which some of the natives destroyed the tortoises. 

 The proprietor informed us that only the males were killed, but 

 we noticed that the working people made little distinction in the 

 sexes when killing for food. Some evenings, two or three men 

 coming in from different directions would each carry in his hand 

 a small piece of tortoise meat, and a pound or so of fat with 

 which to cook it. Of each tortoise killed not over five pounds of 

 meat would be taken, the remainder being left for the wild dogs 

 that swarmed about. 



One Saturday evening I had occasion to go down the trail a 

 mile or so, after some of the natives had departed for the shore 

 settlement, where all the women and children lived. I found a 

 large tortoise, three feet six inches long and hundreds of years 

 old, which had been cut open with a machete, but apparently not 

 more than three pounds of meat had been taken from it. A little 

 farther on lay a dead female, from which nothing had been taken 

 save a string of eggs and a very little meat. 



At the rate of destruction now in progress it will require but 

 a few years to clear this entire mountain of tortoises, and when 

 we see the methods pursued by the proprietor in getting tortoise 

 oil for shipment to the mainland, we know that the large tortoises 

 can last but a few months after the work of the oil hunter begins 

 in earnest. 



To show what has already been done by oil hunters, I took 

 two photographs at the water-hole, where lay the largest number 

 of tortoise skeletons. There were about 150 skeletons at this pool, 

 and a half-mile away, in another depression, were about 100 

 more. While there were more skeletons at these two places than 

 we saw elsewhere, frequently 10 or 15 were observed in other 

 basins where the tortoises had gone for water. 



The outfit of the oil hunter is very simple, consisting merely 

 of a can or pot in which to try out the oil, and three or four 

 burros for carrying the five- or ten-gallon kegs in which it is 

 transported to the settlement. After making a camp near a wa- 



