336 MOSTLY MAMMALS 



specially engaged in carrying tortoises from Rodriguez to 

 Mauritius took six thousand at once. Such a drain could 

 not but tell rapidly on the supply, and by the early part 

 of; the last century the Mascarenes were denuded of their 

 tortoise-fauna. 



The Malagasy tortoise {Testudo grandidieri) appears, as 

 already said, to have been exterminated before Europeans 

 had any knowledge of the islands, but beautifully pre- 

 served shells (wanting the horny shields) have been dis- 

 covered, three of which are exhibited in the Natural 

 History Museum. Among the Mascarene tortoises, most 

 of which are distinguished from those of Aldabra by their 

 long thick necks and the absence of a nuchal shield* to 

 the shell, five or six species are known in a sub-fossil 

 state from Mauritius. To one of these (T. indicd) special 

 interest attaches from the circumstance that till about 1871 

 all the tortoises from the islands of the Indian Ocean were 

 referred to by that name. Of equal interest, although 

 from a totally different point of view, is the Rodriguez 

 tortoise {T. vosmaeri), on account of the extreme tenuity 

 of its bony shell — a feature shared by certain of the 

 Galapagos species, and indicative that the thick shell 

 characteristic of tortoises generally is not required by the 

 island forms which have no enemies. 



A tortoise received in company with two others from the 

 Seychelles in 1894 by Mr. Rothschild, and now living at 

 Tring, is believed to be one of the Mascarene species, with 

 which it agrees in the characters referred to above. It 

 may have come from one of the smaller islands, and thus 

 be different from any of the named forms, although it 

 is difficult to determine this during its life. Very little 



* The nuchal shield is the single symmetrical horny plate found 

 in the middle line of the front margin of the shell of most tortoises. 



