60 WHAT MR. DARWIN SAW. 



GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, 



severely; but I caught many by the tail, and they never 

 tried to bite me. If two are placed on the ground and held 

 together, they will fight, and bite each other till blood is 

 drawn. The little birds know how harmless these creatures 

 are: I have seen one of the thick-billed finches picking at 

 one end of a piece of cactus while a lizard was eating at the 

 other end ; and afterward the little bird, with the utmost in- 

 difference, hopped on the back of the reptile. I opened the 

 stomachs of several, and found them full of vegetable fibres 

 and leaves of different trees, especially of an acacia. To ob- 

 tain the acacia-leaves they crawl up the low, stunted trees; 

 and it is not uncommon to see a pair quietly browsing, while 

 seated on a branch several feet above the ground. 



THE TORTOISE. 



IN the woods on Charles Island there are many wild 

 pigs and goats, but the chief article of animal food is sup- 

 plied by the tortoises. Their numbers have, of course, been 

 greatly reduced, but the people yet count on two days' hunt- 

 ing giving them food for the rest of the week. It is said 

 that formerly single vessels have taken away as many as 

 seven hundred, and that the ship's company of a frigate some 

 years since brought down, in one day, two hundred tortoises 

 to the beach. Some grow to an immense size : Mr. Lawson, 

 an Englishman, and vice-governor of the colony, told us that 

 he had seen several so large that it required six or eight 

 men to lift them from the ground, and that some had yielded 

 as much as two hundred pounds of meat. The old males 



