1 82 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PL A Y 



size, which Nature seems to have set to the growth 

 of particular species, is really as fixed and arbitrary as 

 might appear. The general weight of what is called 

 ' palaeontological * evidence shows that many of the 

 modern forms had corresponding species of gigantic 

 size, while others, which are only recently extinct, 

 or survive in small numbers, were larger than the 

 present forms. Take, for example, the gigantic 

 tortoises, one of the last members of whose respected 

 family died at Colombo at the age of at least one 

 hundred, and whose epitaph was written by Dr 

 .Gunther in the 'Times. Dr Gunther has always had 

 a true naturalist's sympathy for these last survivors 

 of a race whose unwieldy bulk suggested to the fancy 

 of Eastern cosmogenists the picture of the tortoise 

 bearing the world upon its back. When they have 

 completed their allotted century or so of blameless 

 life, they become their own monuments in a chelonian 

 Valhalla at South Kensington, and dedicate them- 

 selves in little votive tablets to the musing reflections 

 of mushroom humanity. There are exhibited the 

 remains of the great tortoise of Aldabra, a small un- 

 inhabited island in the Indian Ocean, north-west of 

 Madagascar. It was quite young, its known age being 

 only eighty years, and it was still growing at the 

 time of its death ; but it weighed 870 lb., and its 

 legs were like those of a small rhinoceros. Compared 



